Minimum Effort Decentralized Control Design for Contracting Network Systems

We consider the problem of making a networked system contracting by designing “minimal effort” local controllers. Our method combines a hierarchical contraction characterization and a matrix-balancing approach to stabilizing a Metzler matrix via minimal diagonal perturbations. We demonstrate our approach by designing local controllers that render contractive a network of FitzHugh–Nagumo neurons with a general topology of interactions.