Sampled-Data Consensus for Multiagent Systems With Open Topology and Packet Loss

This article studies a more realistic issue in multiagent systems (MASs) named open topology, where the network scale tends to be variable as agents may join, leave, or be replaced. In order to reveal the influence that the variation of network scale brings on the dynamic behavior of MASs, a novel transition process containing impulse is provided. Then by applying the Halanay-like inequality, the distributed sampled-data control is designed to ensure the consensus property of the MASs under open topology. It is shown that the derived results can degenerate into the consensus criteria for general MASs with fixed-scale topology. Also, the potential packet loss phenomenon existing in controller is considered, which is integrated into the consensus performance via the average packet loss interval (APLI) condition, thereby guaranteeing the robustness of consensus performance against packet loss. Moreover, within the framework of open topology, it is proved that the admissible packet loss for MASs can be estimated in an average sense. At the end, the availability of this article is demonstrated by discussing a numerical example.