Exhaustive stability analysis in a consensus system with time delay and irregular topologies

摘要

A consensus problem and its stability are studied for a group of agents with second-order dynamics and communication delays. The communication topologies are taken as irregular but always connected and undirected. The delays are assumed to be quasi-static and the same for all the interagent channels. A decentralised, PD-like control structure is proposed to create a consensus in the position and velocity of the agents. We present an interesting factorisation feature for the characteristic equation of the system which simplifies the stability analysis considerably from a prohibitively large dimensional problem to a manageable small scale. It facilitates a rare stability picture in the space of the control parameters and the delay, utilising a paradigm named cluster treatment of characteristic roots (CTCR). The influence of the individual factors on the absolute and relative stability of the system is studied. This leads to the introduction of two novel concepts: the most exigent eigenvalue, which refers to the one that defines the delay stability margin of the system, and the most critical eigenvalue, which is the one that dictates the consensus speed of the system. It is observed that the most exigent eigenvalue is not always the most critical, and this feature may be used as a design tool for the control logic. Case studies and simulations results are presented to verify these concepts.