Architecture Induced by Distributed Backstepping Design

An important problem in the distributed control of large-scale and infinite dimensional systems is related to the choice of the appropriate controller architecture. We utilize backstepping as a tool for distributed control of nonlinear infinite dimensional systems on lattices, and provide the answer to the following question: what is the controller architecture induced by distributed backstepping design? In particular, we study the case in which we start backstepping design with decentralized control Lyapunov function (CLF), and cancel all interactions at each step of backstepping. For this control law we quantify the number of control induced interactions necessary to guarantee desired dynamical behavior of the infinite dimensional system. We also demonstrate how the controllers with favorable architectures can be designed.