Summary
This paper proposes a novel summation inequality, say a polynomials‐based summation inequality, which contains well‐known summation inequalities as special cases. By specially choosing slack matrices, polynomial functions, and an arbitrary vector, it reduces to Moon's inequality, a discrete‐time counterpart of Wirtinger‐based integral inequality, auxiliary function‐based summation inequalities employing the same‐order orthogonal polynomial functions. Thus, the proposed summation inequality is more general than other summation inequalities. Additionally, this paper derives the polynomials‐based summation inequality employing first‐order and second‐order orthogonal polynomial functions, which contributes to obtaining improved stability criteria for discrete‐time systems with time‐varying delays. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.