Reaching global leaderless consensus in directed networks via smooth and bounded control
Xiao Ping Yu, Weiyao Lan · International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control · 2022
Abstract This short communication revisits the leaderless consensus problem in directed networks. The network topology is described by a general directed graph which is only needed to contain at least a directed spanning tree, and is not necessarily strongly connected. A bounded and smooth control law using the hyperbolic tangent function is developed as the consensus protocol. Explicit stability analysis based on Lyapunov's second method and the concept of condensation graph is given. The proposed approach transforms the leaderless consensus problem into two subproblems: reaching leader‐following consensus under a graph containing a directed spanning tree with the leader being the root node and reaching leaderless consensus under a strongly connected graph. Remarkably, a perturbed system is formulated as the bridge between these two subproblems which are solved by Lyapunov's second method. The global leaderless consensus is achieved based on the stability of the perturbed system. Finally, two numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.