Distributed Backstepping Control for Nonlinear Switched Interconnected Systems: An Application of Water Transport Systems

In this paper, we propose a distributed model-based backstepping control approach for a class of nonlinear switched interconnected systems with a strict-feedback structure. The proposed control architecture effectively addresses the technical challenges that arise from strong interconnection terms without imposing restrictive assumptions on them, which have not been reported in existing literature. Specifically, we utilize a distributed control architecture to handle the switched strongly interconnected systems. The model-based distributed controller is then constructed by combining common Lyapunov functionals and the backstepping scheme. This controller ensures the uniform boundedness of all the closed-loop variables, while the tracking error converges to a tunable small compact set that includes the origin. Finally, the applicability of the proposed controller is demonstrated through the numerical simulations of a water testbed representing a water transport network.