Observer-based tracking control for heterogeneous dynamical systems under asynchronous attacks

The robust consensus tracking of heterogeneous dynamical networks in asynchronous attack scenarios is investigated. The agents in the considered network have norm-bounded uncertainties and general Lipschitz nonlinearities. Distributed observers are firstly built to reconstruct the states of agents. However, the malicious cyber attacks will affect the connectivity of topologies of both controllers' and observers' communication networks. Different from previous studies, the attacks can be launched at different time instants in these two communication channels. An algorithm is given for appropriate selection of the feedback gain matrices as well as coupling strengths. Sufficient conditions regarding the length of attacking intervals are given to ensure that the consensus tracking of the heterogeneous networked system could be realized. Lastly, some future works concerning the cyber security issues are also be addressed.