  New sufficient conditions for the characterization of dwell-times for linear
impulsive systems are proposed and shown to coincide with continuous decrease
conditions of a certain class of looped-functionals, a recently introduced type
of functionals suitable for the analysis of hybrid systems. This approach
allows to consider Lyapunov functions that evolve non-monotonically along the
flow of the system in a new way, broadening then the admissible class of
systems which may be analyzed. As a byproduct, the particular structure of the
obtained conditions makes the method is easily extendable to uncertain systems
by exploiting some convexity properties. Several examples illustrate the
approach.
