Consensus robustness of multi-agent systems against heterogeneous asymmetric input saturations and asynchronous time-varying communication delays

• Published in: Information sciences 2023-11, Vol.647, p.119483, Article 119483
• Main Authors: Zou, Yao, Liu, Hongji, Xia, Kewei, Zhang, Sujie, Wu, Yongmei, Li, Danyong, Zuo, Zongyu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communication delays; Consensus; Multi-agent systems; Saturation; Switching topology
• ISSN: 0020-0255
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ins.2023.119483

This paper investigates the combined effect of input saturations and communication delays on the multi-agent consensus over a switching topology of weak connectivity. The input saturations are in a general form such that the saturation level of each agent is asymmetric and those of distinct agents are heterogeneous. Besides, the communication delays are time-varying and those in different channels are asynchronous. Both continuous- and discrete-time multi-agent systems are studied. For both the multi-agent systems over a switching digraph of uniform joint strong connectivity, it is demonstrated that the conventional distributed protocols, despite the simultaneous existence of the input saturations and communication delays, still guarantee the consensus results. It turns out that the consensus results are of great robustness against arbitrary heterogeneous asymmetric input saturations and arbitrary bounded communication delays. Simulations are carried out to verify this finding. •This paper establishes the consensus results of multi-agent systems subject to input saturations with heterogeneous asymmetric saturation levels and time-varying asynchronous communication delays.•It is shown that the combined effect of general input saturations and communication delays makes no difference to the consensus results.•The consensus robustness results are applicable to both continuous- and discrete-time multi-agent systems.