Leader-following Consensus of Multi-agent Systems over Finite Fields

The leader-following consensus problem of multi-agent systems over finite fields ${\mathbb F}_p$ is considered in this paper. Dynamics of each agent is governed by a linear equation over ${\mathbb F}_p$, where a distributed control protocol is utilized by the followers.Sufficient and/or necessary conditions on system matrices and graph weights in ${\mathbb F}_p$ are provided for the followers to track the leader

A new framework for consensus for discrete-time directed networks of multi-agents with distributed delays

Copyright @ 2012 Taylor & FrancisIn this article, the distributed consensus problem is considered for discrete-time delayed networks of dynamic agents with fixed topologies, where the networks under investigation are directed and the time-delays involved are distributed time delays including a single or multiple time delay(s) as special cases. By using the invariance principle of delay difference systems, a new unified framework is established to deal with the consensus for the discrete-time delayed multi-agent system. It is shown that the addressed discrete-time network with arbitrary distributed time delays reaches consensus provided that it is strongly connected. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the proposed methods.This work was supported in part by City University of Hong Kong under Grant 7008114, the Royal Society of the UK, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 60774073 and 61074129, and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China under Grant BK2010313

Consensus of Multi-Agent Networks in the Presence of Adversaries Using Only Local Information

This paper addresses the problem of resilient consensus in the presence of misbehaving nodes. Although it is typical to assume knowledge of at least some nonlocal information when studying secure and fault-tolerant consensus algorithms, this assumption is not suitable for large-scale dynamic networks. To remedy this, we emphasize the use of local strategies to deal with resilience to security breaches. We study a consensus protocol that uses only local information and we consider worst-case security breaches, where the compromised nodes have full knowledge of the network and the intentions of the other nodes. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the normal nodes to reach consensus despite the influence of the malicious nodes under different threat assumptions. These conditions are stated in terms of a novel graph-theoretic property referred to as network robustness.Comment: This report contains the proofs of the results presented at HiCoNS 201

Consensus problems in networks of agents with switching topology and time-delays

In this paper, we discuss consensus problems for networks of dynamic agents with fixed and switching topologies. We analyze three cases: 1) directed networks with fixed topology; 2) directed networks with switching topology; and 3) undirected networks with communication time-delays and fixed topology. We introduce two consensus protocols for networks with and without time-delays and provide a convergence analysis in all three cases. We establish a direct connection between the algebraic connectivity (or Fiedler eigenvalue) of the network and the performance (or negotiation speed) of a linear consensus protocol. This required the generalization of the notion of algebraic connectivity of undirected graphs to digraphs. It turns out that balanced digraphs play a key role in addressing average-consensus problems. We introduce disagreement functions for convergence analysis of consensus protocols. A disagreement function is a Lyapunov function for the disagreement network dynamics. We proposed a simple disagreement function that is a common Lyapunov function for the disagreement dynamics of a directed network with switching topology. A distinctive feature of this work is to address consensus problems for networks with directed information flow. We provide analytical tools that rely on algebraic graph theory, matrix theory, and control theory. Simulations are provided that demonstrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results