Time- and Event-Triggered Communication for Multi-Agent Systems-Part I: General Framework

• Published in: IEEE transactions on automatic control Vol. 70; no. 1; pp. 447 - 462
• Main Authors: Dolk, V. S., Scheres, K. J. A., Postoyan, R., Heemels, W. P. M. H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.01.2025; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Automatic; Communication; Communication networks; Delays; Dissipativity; Engineering Sciences; event-triggered control; Lower bounds; Multi-agent systems; Multiagent systems; networked control systems; Packet loss; Packet transmission; Protocols; Stability; Synchronization; Vectors; Networked systems; Lyapunov stability; Hybrid dynamical systems; Event-triggered control; Dissipativity
• ISSN: 0018-9286; 1558-2523
• DOI: 10.1109/TAC.2024.3427908

We present a framework for the design of time- and event-triggered communication schemes for a broad class of multiagent systems (MAS). The framework is general in the sense that we consider a class of heterogeneous nonlinear MAS with directed communication graphs subject to disturbances and the inevitable imperfections induced by packet-based networked communication, such as time-varying transmission delays and intervals. Under suitable conditions, the designed distributed time- or event-triggered communication schemes lead to an MAS that is dissipative with respect to a desired supply rate, and thus can be used to study various properties such as <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathcal {L}_{p}</tex-math></inline-formula>-gain stability, input-to-state stability, and passivity. Strictly positive lower bounds on the interevent times are ensured and robustness to nonuniform time-varying delays in terms of maximum allowable delays is guaranteed. In addition, the framework allows for the consideration of destination protocols, which determine, at each transmission instant, to which (groups of) agent(s) a local output measurement is being transmitted. These destination protocols can be used to include packet loss and denial-of-service, as will be shown in the second part of this paper.