Preliminary Investigation of Mesh Stability for Linear Systems

Abstract

Abstract Damping of disturbances as they propagate through a chain of interconnected systems, termed string stability, has been the subject of significant research. In this paper, we investigate mesh stability, which is the two-dimensional extension of string stability. We review the key results used for string stability analysis and then generalize the conditions for MIMO systems. These results are then applied to a simple class of linear systems which form a mesh in two-dimensions. It is shown (as in the one-dimensional case) that communicating the velocity and acceleration of the lead vehicle to all subsystems is sufficient for mesh stability. This result is then verified by simulation.