Consensus of Multiagent Systems and Synchronization of Complex Networks: A Unified Viewpoint

TLDR

The paper studies consensus in multiagent systems with time‑invariant communication topologies and general linear node dynamics. The authors propose a distributed observer‑type consensus protocol based on relative output measurements and introduce a unified framework for consensus of multiagent systems and synchronization of complex networks. Under the framework, consensus with a spanning‑tree topology is reduced to stability of low‑dimensional matrices, a consensus region is defined and analyzed, and a multistep design procedure is provided. The protocol exists and yields an unbounded consensus region precisely when each agent is stabilizable and detectable; it also achieves consensus for time‑varying states, is robust to disturbances, and is validated by simulations on low‑Earth‑orbit satellite formation flying.

Abstract

This paper addresses the consensus problem of multiagent systems with a time-invariant communication topology consisting of general linear node dynamics. A distributed observer-type consensus protocol based on relative output measurements is proposed. A new framework is introduced to address in a unified way the consensus of multiagent systems and the synchronization of complex networks. Under this framework, the consensus of multiagent systems with a communication topology having a spanning tree can be cast into the stability of a set of matrices of the same low dimension. The notion of consensus region is then introduced and analyzed. It is shown that there exists an observer-type protocol solving the consensus problem and meanwhile yielding an unbounded consensus region if and only if each agent is both stabilizable and detectable. A multistep consensus protocol design procedure is further presented. The consensus with respect to a time-varying state and the robustness of the consensus protocol to external disturbances are finally discussed. The effectiveness of the theoretical results is demonstrated through numerical simulations, with an application to low-Earth-orbit satellite formation flying.