Performance of Single and Double-Integrator Networks over Directed Graphs

TL;DR

This paper develops a spectral framework to evaluate and compare the performance of single and double integrator networks over directed graphs, revealing how directionality and connectivity influence network response.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for computing performance metrics using spectral properties of graph Laplacians and analyzes the impact of graph directionality on network performance.

Findings

Directed and undirected single-integrator networks perform identically.

Double-integrator networks' performance can degrade due to graph directionality.

Well-designed feedback can mitigate or reverse performance degradation caused by directionality.

Abstract

This paper provides a framework to evaluate the performance of single and double integrator networks over arbitrary directed graphs. Adopting vehicular network terminology, we consider quadratic performance metrics defined by the L2-norm of position and velocity based response functions given impulsive inputs to each vehicle. We exploit the spectral properties of weighted graph Laplacians and output performance matrices to derive a novel method of computing the closed-form solutions for this general class of performance metrics, which include H2-norm based quantities as special cases. We then explore the effect of the interplay between network properties (e.g. edge directionality and connectivity) and the control strategy on the overall network performance. More precisely, for systems whose interconnection is described by graphs with normal Laplacian L, we characterize the role of directionality by comparing their performance with that of their undirected counterparts, represented by the Hermitian part of L. We show that, for single-integrator networks, directed and undirected graphs perform identically. However, for double-integrator networks, graph directionality -- expressed by the eigenvalues of L with nonzero imaginary part -- can significantly degrade performance. Interestingly in many cases, well-designed feedback can also exploit directionality to mitigate degradation or even improve the performance to exceed that of the undirected case. Finally we focus on a system coherence metric -- aggregate deviation from the state average -- to investigate the relationship between performance and degree of connectivity, leading to somewhat surprising findings. For example increasing the number of neighbors on a \omega-nearest neighbor directed graph does not necessarily improve performance. Similarly, we demonstrate equivalence in performance between all-to-one and all-to-all communication graphs.