Delta-operator based consensus analysis of multi-agent networks with link failures
For researchers in multi-agent systems, this work provides a unified framework and consensus conditions under random link failures, but the results are incremental as they extend existing consensus theory to delta-operator formulation.
This paper proposes a delta-operator-based discrete-time multi-agent system that unifies discrete-time and continuous-time systems, and shows that consensus is reached in mean, in probability, and almost surely if the expected graph is strongly connected, even with link failures modeled by randomly switching graphs. The influence of faulty agents on consensus value is quantified using matrix perturbation theory, with error bounds provided.
In this paper, a discrete-time multi-agent system is presented which is formulated in terms of the delta operator. The proposed multi-agent system can unify discrete-time and continuous-time multi-agent systems. In a multi-agent network, in practice, the communication among agents is acted upon by various factors. The communication network among faulty agents may cause link failures, which is modeled by randomly switching graphs. First, we show that the delta representation of discrete-time multi-agent system reaches consensus in mean (in probability and almost surely) if the expected graph is strongly connected. The results induce that the continuous-time multi-agent system with random networks can also reach consensus in the same sense. Second, the influence of faulty agents on consensus value is quantified under original network. By using matrix perturbation theory, the error bound is also presented in this paper. Finally, a simulation example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results.