Robust consensus control by state-dependent dithers

This paper introduces a new method for enhancing robustness against communication uncertainties in consensus control by using a state and sampling-interval dependent dither in signal transmission. This method is based on the principle of Itô's formula for stochastic differential equation in which the diffusion term introduces a quadratic term in stability analysis. It is revealed that this feature can be utilized to provide robustness against communication multiplicative uncertainties, much beyond the ability of traditional feedback robustness design. Algorithms are introduced and their convergence properties are established. It is shown that appropriate design of the dithers can create a highly robust consensus control. Simulation results are used to illustrate the benefits of this method.