Multi-Hop Relay Protocols for Fast Consensus Seeking

Consensus protocols are distributed algorithms in networked multi-agent systems. Based on the local information, agents automatically converge to a common consensus state and the convergence speed is determined by the algebraic connectivity of the communication network. In order to achieve a fast consensus seeking, we propose the multi-hop relay protocols, where each agent can expand its knowledge by employing multi-hop paths in the network. We demonstrate that multi-hop relay protocols can enlarge the algebraic connectivity without physically changing the network topology. Moreover, communication delays are discussed and a tradeoff is identified between the convergence speed and the time delay sensitivity