Coordination Over Multi-Agent Networks With Unmeasurable States and Finite-Level Quantization

TL;DR

This paper addresses the challenge of coordinating linear multi-agent systems over digital networks with unmeasurable states and finite-level quantization, proposing new protocols that ensure stabilization and state observation.

Contribution

It introduces quantized-observer and Certainty Equivalence based control protocols, providing necessary and sufficient conditions for stabilization and observation under quantization constraints.

Findings

Protocols ensure inter-agent state observation.

Conditions depend on stabilizability and detectability.

Framework handles unmeasurable states with finite-level quantization.

Abstract

In this note, the coordination of linear discrete-time multi-agent systems over digital networks is investigated with unmeasurable states in agents' dynamics. The quantized-observer based communication protocols and Certainty Equivalence principle based control protocols are proposed to characterize the inter-agent communication and the cooperative control in an integrative framework. By investigating the structural and asymptotic properties of the equations of stabilization and estimation errors nonlinearly coupled by the finite-level quantization scheme, some necessary conditions and sufficient conditions are given for the existence of such communication and control protocols to ensure the inter-agent state observation and cooperative stabilization. It is shown that these conditions come down to the simultaneous stabilizability and the detectability of the dynamics of agents and the structure of the communication network.