Performance analysis with network-enhanced complexities: On fading measurements, event-triggered mechanisms, and cyber attacks

Copyright © 2014 Derui Ding et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Nowadays, the real-world systems are usually subject to various complexities such as parameter uncertainties, time-delays, and nonlinear disturbances. For networked systems, especially large-scale systems such as multiagent systems and systems over sensor networks, the complexities are inevitably enhanced in terms of their degrees or intensities because of the usage of the communication networks. Therefore, it would be interesting to (1) examine how this kind of network-enhanced complexities affects the control or filtering performance; and (2) develop some suitable approaches for controller/filter design problems. In this paper, we aim to survey some recent advances on the performance analysis and synthesis with three sorts of fashionable network-enhanced complexities, namely, fading measurements, event-triggered mechanisms, and attack behaviors of adversaries. First, these three kinds of complexities are introduced in detail according to their engineering backgrounds, dynamical characteristic, and modelling techniques. Then, the developments of the performance analysis and synthesis issues for various networked systems are systematically reviewed. Furthermore, some challenges are illustrated by using a thorough literature review and some possible future research directions are highlighted.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61134009, 61329301, 61203139, 61374127, and 61374010, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Output Feedback Control for Couple-Group Consensus of Multiagent Systems

This paper deals with the couple-group consensus problem for multiagent systems via output feedback control. Both continuous- and discrete-time cases are considered. The consensus problems are converted into the stability problem of the error systems by the system transformation. We obtain two necessary and sufficient conditions of couple-group consensus in different forms for each case. Two different algorithms are used to design the control gains for continuous- and discrete-time case, respectively. Finally, simulation examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed results

An Overview of Recent Progress in the Study of Distributed Multi-agent Coordination

This article reviews some main results and progress in distributed multi-agent coordination, focusing on papers published in major control systems and robotics journals since 2006. Distributed coordination of multiple vehicles, including unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned ground vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles, has been a very active research subject studied extensively by the systems and control community. The recent results in this area are categorized into several directions, such as consensus, formation control, optimization, task assignment, and estimation. After the review, a short discussion section is included to summarize the existing research and to propose several promising research directions along with some open problems that are deemed important for further investigations

Distributed Event-triggered Fault-tolerant Consensus Control of Multi-agent Systems under DoS Attacks

This study investigates the distributed fault-tolerant consensus issue of multi-agent systems subject to complicated abrupt and incipient time-varying actuator faults in physical hierarchy and aperiodic denial-of-service (DoS) attacks in networked hierarchy. Decentralized estimators are devised to estimate consecutive system states and actuator faults. A unified framework with an absolute local output-based closed-loop estimator in decentralized fault estimation design and a relative broadcasting state-based open-loop estimator in distributed event-triggered fault-tolerant consensus design is developed. Criteria of exponential consensus of the faulty multi-agent systems under DoS attacks are derived by virtue of average dwelling time and attack frequency technique. Simulations are outlined to confirm the efficacy of the proposed distributed fault-tolerant consensus control algorithm based on an event-triggered mechanism

Tracking Consensus of Networked Random Nonlinear Multi-agent Systems with Intermittent Communications

The paper proposes an intermittent communication mechanism for the tracking consensus of high-order nonlinear multi-agent systems (MASs) surrounded by random disturbances. Each collaborating agent is described by a class of high-order nonlinear uncertain strict-feedback dynamics which is disturbed by a wide stationary process representing the external noise. The resiliency level of this networked control system (NCS) to the failures of physical devices or unreliability of communication channels is analyzed by introducing a linear auxiliary trajectory of the system. More precisely, the unreliability of communication channels sometimes makes an agent incapable of sensing the local information or receiving it from neighboring nodes. Therefore, an intermittent communication scheme is proposed among the follower agents as a consequence of employing the linear auxiliary dynamics. The closed-loop networked system signals are proved to be noise-to-state practically stable in probability (NSpS-P). It has been justified that each agent follows the trajectory of the corresponding local auxiliary virtual system practically in probability. The simulation experiments finally quantify the effectiveness of our proposed approach in terms of providing a resilient performance against unreliability of communication channels and reaching the tracking consensus.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure