Leader-following consensus of data-sampled multi-agent systems
with stochastic switching topologies
Huanyu Zhao
Faculty of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huai'an 223003, Jiangsu, PR China
article info
Article history:
Received 27 December 2014
Received in revised form
6 February 2015
Accepted 30 April 2015
Communicated by Guang Wu Zheng
Available online 11 May 2015
Keywords:
Leader-following consensus
Multi-agent systems
Markovian switching topology
Sampled-data
abstract
This paper investigates the leader-following consensus problem for multi-agent systems with Markovian
switching topologies in a sampled-data setting. We study two algorithms corresponding to the case
where the leader's state is time varying or time invariant. With a time-varying leader's state, we present
necessary and sufficient conditions for boundedness of the tracking error systems. With a time-invariant
leader's state, we present necessary and sufficient conditions for mean-square stability of the tracking
error systems. An optimization algorithm is given to derive the allowable control gains or the feasible
sampling period. Simulation examples are presented to show the usefulness of the results.
& 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Leader-following consensus has received significant attention
in the control field in recent years. This is mainly due to its wide
applications in engineering, such as unmanned air vehicles, mobile
robotic swarms, wireless sensor networks and cooperative sur-
veillance [1–5]. The main idea of leader-following consensus is
that the leader sends its state information to the followers directly
or indirectly such that the tracking errors between leader and all
followers are as small as possible. There are many publications on
the topic of the leader-following consensus problem [6–8].In[6],
the multi-agent system considered was with measurement noises
and directed interconnection topology. A sufficient condition for
mean-square stability of the closed loop tracking control system
was obtained by designing distributed estimators. In [7], both
leaderless and leader-following consensus problems were studied.
The stability or boundedness conditions were presented based on
Lyapunov theorems and Nyquist stability criterion. By using the
sampled-data control approach, the leader-following consensus
for multi-agent systems was studied in [8]. The topology consid-
ered is deterministic.
Data-sampled approach is freq uently used to discr etize the
continuous-time system in control community. In recent years this
method is also used to study the multi-agent systems [8–12].Two
sampled-data coordination algorithms for double-integrator dyna-
mics were studied in [1 0] where the int eraction topology is fixed undi-
rected/dir ected. In [11], the consensus problem of double-integrator
multi-agent systems with both fixed and switching topologies was
studied. The switching signal is arbitrary and onl y a sufficient condit ion
is deriv ed t o solv e a consensus problem in this case. In [1 2],theauthors
researched the stochastic bounded consensus tracking problems of
multi-agent syst ems, where the sampling delay induced by the sam-
pling process was considered.
The topologies in the above literature are all deterministic or
switching in a deterministic framework. However, the system
models are sometimes switching stochastically due to the internal
or/and external disturbance. Similar to some other control sys-
tems, the Markovian switching model has been used to describe
the interaction topology among the agents in very recent years
[13,16].In[13], the static stabilization problem of a decentralized
discrete-time single-integrator network with Markovian switching
topologies was studied. In [14], the authors considered the con-
sensus for a network of single-integrator agents with Markovian
switching topologies. In [15], the authors studied the mean-square
consentability problem for a network of double-integrator agents
with Markovian switching topologies. In [16], the authors studied
the distributed discrete-time coordinated tracking problem for
multi-agent systems with Markovian switching topologies in case
of the transition probabilities are equal.
Motivated by the former considerations, we will extend the
leader-following consensus problem in [8] to the case of Marko-
vian switching topologies in this paper. In this case, the leader-
following consensus problem will become more challenging. Both
time-invariant and time-varying leader are considered. Based on
algebra graph theory and Markovian jump system theory, we
present the necessary and sufficient conditions for the conver-
gence of the tracking error systems. An optimization algorithm
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
journal homepage: www.el sevier.com/locate/n eucom
Neurocomputing
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2015.04.080
0925-2312/& 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
E-mail address: hyzhao@163.com
Neurocomputing 167 (2015) 172–178