Cluster Consensus In Multi-agent Systems With Intermittent Communication

The research on consensus problems has received much attention in the past decade thanks to its potential applications in several aspects,such as sensor networks,formation control,decision making etc.Based on the extended notions of consensus,various types of consensus problems have been studied.For instances,leader-following consensus,average consensus and cluster consensus,etc.Cluster(or group)consensus,as a research branch of consensus problem,means that all agents in the same cluster achieve an identical state while agents in different clusters behave independently.The research is based on the fact that the aims of many cooperative tasks are multi-missions and needs to be done by partitioning the node set.The complexity of cluster consensus problems is mainly determined by the communication graph and the varieties of dynamics.The main contents in this paper can be summarized as follows:The section 1 is introduction,in which we introduce research background,purpose and significance of cluster consensus in multi-agent systems,and then we give the research status and results of clustered multi-agent networks.Finally,the organization of this paper is also presented.The section 2 is preliminaries,some basic knowledge and definitions are given in section 2.In section 3,the cluster consensus problem with delays of first-order nonlinear multiagent systems is studied through pinning leader-following approach with periodic intermittent effect.A new type of pinning consensus protocol with intermittent effect is designed according to the ways in which the agents link.A redefined notion on cluster consensus with two sorts of time delays is proposed.Finally,an example with numerical simulation is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the obtained results.In section 4,the cluster consensus problem of first-order nonlinear multi-agent systems with aperiodic intermittent communication is studied through pinning leader-following approach.New notions of leading intermittence and inter-cluster intermittence which related to the intermittent linking ways of leader-following clustered structure are developed,and several new systems with intermittence are established due to the new notions.Some consensus criteria are derived to guarantee that the cluster consensus problem for the systems with intermittent communication can be solved.Finally,some examples showing the effectiveness of the provided criterion are given.In section 5,a class of cluster consensus problem of the multi-agent systems(MASs)with aperiodic intermittent communication is studied through tracking approach.A new notion of layered intermittence is developed.To track the leading subnetwork,a new type of pinning consensus protocol with aperiodic intermittent effects is designed according to the topological properties of agents,the protocol is applied to construct several new intermittent switching systems.Some consensus criteria are derived to guarantee that the cluster consensus can be reached.Finally,several examples with numerical simulation are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the obtained results.In section 6,we mainly study the performance of consensus for star-composed networks.Specifically,we investigate the convergence speed and robustness of the consensus of the networks.Finally,the performances of the star-composed networks have been compared,and then some conclusions have been made.