Detection and Isolation of Link Failures under the Agreement Protocol

TL;DR

This paper establishes a relationship between link failures in multi-agent networks and observable discontinuities in node responses, proposing a sensor placement algorithm for failure detection and isolation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analytical property linking link failures to response discontinuities and develops an algorithm for sensor placement to detect and isolate such failures.

Findings

Derived a property relating link failures to response discontinuities

Proposed an algorithm for sensor placement for failure detection

Validated results through detailed examples

Abstract

In this paper a property of the multi-agent consensus dynamics that relates the failure of links in the network to jump discontinuities in the derivatives of the output responses of the nodes is derived and verified analytically. At the next step, an algorithm for sensor placement is proposed, which would enable the designer to detect and isolate any link failures across the network based on the observed jump discontinuities in the derivatives of the responses of a subset of nodes. These results are explained through elaborative examples.