Online Adversarial Stabilization of Unknown Networked Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel distributed algorithm for stabilizing unknown networked linear systems under communication constraints and adversarial disturbances, avoiding system identification and handling delays effectively.

Contribution

It presents the first provably stabilizing method using distributed nested convex body chasing and system level synthesis for unknown networked systems.

Findings

Algorithm guarantees stabilization under adversarial disturbances

Handles broad communication delay scenarios

Scales favorably with system size

Abstract

We investigate the problem of stabilizing an unknown networked linear system under communication constraints and adversarial disturbances. We propose the first provably stabilizing algorithm for the problem. The algorithm uses a distributed version of nested convex body chasing to maintain a consistent estimate of the network dynamics and applies system level synthesis to determine a distributed controller based on this estimated model. Our approach avoids the need for system identification and accommodates a broad class of communication delay while being fully distributed and scaling favorably with the number of subsystems.