Cyclic-Pursuit-Based Circular Formation Control of Mobile Agents with Limited Communication Ranges and Communication Delays

This article addresses the circular formation control problem of a multi-agent system moving on a circle in the presence of limited communication ranges and communication delays.To minimize the number of communication links,a novel distributed controller based on a cyclic pursuit strategy is developed in which each agent needs only its leading neighbour’s information.In contrast to existing works,we propose a set of new potential functions to deal with heterogeneous communication ranges and communication delays simultaneously.A new framework based on the admissible upper bound of the formation error is established so that both connectivity maintenance and order preservation can be achieved at the same time.It is shown that the multi-agent system can be driven to the desired circular formation as time goes to infinity under the proposed controller.Finally,the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by some simulation examples.

Robust control for a class of nonlinear networked systems with stochastic communication delays via sliding mode conception

This paper deals with the robust control problem for a class of uncertain nonlinear networked systems with stochastic communication delays via sliding mode conception （SMC）. A sequence of variables obeying Bernoulli distribution are employed to model the randomly occurring communication delays which could be different for different state variables. A discrete switching function that is different from those in the existing literature is first proposed. Then, expressed as the feasibility of a linear matrix inequality （LMI） with an equality constraint, sufficient conditions are derived in order to ensure the globally mean-square asymptotic stability of the system dynamics on the sliding surface. A discrete-time SMC controller is then synthesized to guarantee the discrete-time sliding mode reaching condition with the specified sliding surface. Finally, a simulation example is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Containment consensus with measurement noises and time-varying communication delays

In this paper,we consider the containment consensus control problem for multi-agent systems with measurement noises and time-varying communication delays under directed networks.By using stochastic analysis tools and algebraic graph theory,we prove that the followers can converge to the convex hull spanned by the leaders in the sense of mean square if the allowed upper bound of the time-varying delays satisfies a certain sufficient condition.Moreover,the time-varying delays are asymmetric for each follower agent,and the time-delay-dependent consensus condition is derived.Finally,numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results.

Model-based predictive controller design for a class of nonlinear networked systems with communication delays and data loss

This paper discusses the model-based predictive controller design of networked nonlinear systems with communica- tion delay and data loss. Based on the analysis of the closed-loop networked predictive control systems, the model-based networked predictive control strategy can compensate for communication delay and data loss in an active way. The designed model-based predictive controller can also guarantee the stability of the closed-loop networked system. The simulation re- suits demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed model-based predictive controller design scheme.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Consensus in Third Order Multi-Agent Systems

We deal with a consensus control problem for a group of third order agents which are networked by digraphs.Assuming that the control input of each agent is constructed based on weighted difference between its states and those of its neighbor agents, we aim to propose an algorithm on computing the weighting coefficients in the control input. The problem is reduced to designing Hurwitz polynomials with real or complex coefficients. We show that by using Hurwitz polynomials with complex coefficients, a necessary and sufficient condition can be obtained for designing the consensus algorithm. Since the condition is both necessary and sufficient, we provide a kind of parametrization for all the weighting coefficients achieving consensus. Moreover, the condition is a natural extension to second order consensus, and is reasonable and practical due to its comparatively decreased computation burden. The result is also extended to the case where communication delay exists in the control input.

Design and performance analysis of wireless sensor network location node system for underground mine

Aiming at the application of a wireless sensor network to locating miners in underground mine,we design a wireless sensor network location node system,considering the communication performance and the intrinsic safety. The location node system consists of a mobile node,several fixed nodes,and a sink node,all of whose circuits were designed based on CC2430. A varistor and a RC circuit were used in the reset circuit of a sensor node to guarantee the intrinsic safety by reducing discharge energy,the theoretical analysis of the discharge energy shows that the reset circuit is an intrinsic safety one. The analysis and simulation about the performance of the location node system are discussed,such as network communication delay and packet loss rate,the results show that the highest network communication delay of the system is about 0.11 seconds,and the highest packet loss rate is about 0.13,which assures the location node system has a high reliability,and can locate miners in the underground mine.

Successive lag synchronization on dynamical networks with communication delay

In this paper, successive lag synchronization （SLS） on a dynamical network with communication delay is investigated. In order to achieve SLS on the dynamical network with communication delay, we design linear feedback control and adaptive control, respectively. By using the Lyapunov function method, we obtain some sufficient conditions for global stability of SLS. To verify these results, some numerical examples are further presented. This work may find potential applications in consensus of multi-agent systems.

Hierarchical Cooperative Control of Connected Vehicles:From Heterogeneous Parameters to Heterogeneous Structures

As one of the typical applications of connected vehicles(CVs),the vehicle platoon control technique has been proven to have the advantages of reducing emissions,improving traffic throughout and driving safety.In this paper,a unified hierarchical framework is designed for cooperative control of CVs with both heterogeneous model parameters and structures.By separating neighboring information interaction from local dynamics control,the proposed framework is designed to contain an upper-level observing layer and a lower-level tracking control layer,which helps address the heterogeneity in vehicle parameters and structures.Within the proposed framework,an observer is designed for following vehicles to observe the leading vehicle's states using neighboring communication,while a tracking controller is designed to track the observed leading vehicle using local feedback control.Closed-loop stability in the absence and presence of communication time delay is analyzed,and the observer is further extended to a finite time convergent one to address string stability under general communication topology.Numerical simulation and field experiment verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A Greedy Traffic Light and Queue Aware Routing Protocol for Urban VANETs

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks(VANETs) require reliable data dissemination for time-sensitive public safety applications. An efficient routing protocol plays a vital role to achieve satisfactory network performance. It is well known that routing is a challenging problem in VANETs due to the fast-changing network typology caused by high mobility at both ends of transmission. Moreover, under urban environment, there are two non-negligible factors in routing protocol design, the non-uniform vehicle distribution caused by traffic lights, and the network congestion due to high traffic demand in rush hours. In this paper, we propose a greedy traffic light and queue aware routing protocol(GTLQR) which jointly considers the street connectivity, channel quality, relative distance, and queuing delay to alleviate the packet loss caused by vehicle clustering at the intersection and balance the traffic load among vehicles. Through performance evaluation, we show that our proposed protocol outperforms both TLRC and GLSR-L in terms of packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay.

Distributed cooperative task planning algorithm for multiple satellites in delayed communication environment

Multiple earth observing satellites need to communicate with each other to observe plenty of targets on the Earth together. The factors, such as external interference, result in satellite information interaction delays, which is unable to ensure the integrity and timeliness of the information on decision making for satellites. And the optimization of the planning result is affected. Therefore, the effect of communication delay is considered during the multi-satel ite coordinating process. For this problem, firstly, a distributed cooperative optimization problem for multiple satellites in the delayed communication environment is formulized. Secondly, based on both the analysis of the temporal sequence of tasks in a single satellite and the dynamically decoupled characteristics of the multi-satellite system, the environment information of multi-satellite distributed cooperative optimization is constructed on the basis of the directed acyclic graph（DAG）. Then, both a cooperative optimization decision making framework and a model are built according to the decentralized partial observable Markov decision process（DEC-POMDP）. After that, a satellite coordinating strategy aimed at different conditions of communication delay is mainly analyzed, and a unified processing strategy on communication delay is designed. An approximate cooperative optimization algorithm based on simulated annealing is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness and robustness of the method presented in this paper are verified via the simulation.

Deep space multi-file delivery protocol based on LT codes

A deep space multi-file delivery protocol（DSMDP） based on LT codes is proposed to reduce the influence of long delay and a high bit error rate（BER） in deep space communication. The protocol increases sending redundancy by LT codes to improve the success rate of file delivery, and adopts different protective strategies for different situations of packet loss. At the same time, the multi-file united delivery strategy is adopted to make full use of the retransmission time to reduce the end-toend transmission delay. Furthermore, the protocol determines the quantity of encoded packets according to the feedback for controlling redundancy. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol can significantly reduce the transmission delay of files, which would be effectively suitable for deep space communication environment of high BER and long delay.

Discontinuous event-trigger scheme for global stabilization of state-dependent switching neural networks with communication delay

This paper is concerned with the global stabilization of state-dependent switching neural networks(SDSNNs)viadiscontinuous event-triggered control with network-induced communication delay.Aiming at decreasing triggering times,a discontinuous event-trigger scheme is utilized to determine whether the sampling information is required to be sent outor not.Meanwhile,under the effect of communication delay,the trigger condition and SDSNNs are transformed into twotractable models by designing a fictitious delay function.Then,using the Lyapunov–Krasovskii stability theory,someinequality estimation techniques,and extended reciprocally convex combination method,two sufficient criteria are established for ensuring the global stabilization of the resulting closed-loop SDSNNs,respectively.A unified framework isderived that has the ability to handle the simultaneous existence of the communication delay,the properties of discontinuousevent-trigger scheme,as well as feedback controller design.Additionally,the developed results demonstrate a quantitativerelationship among the event trigger parameter,communication delay,and triggering times.Finally,two numerical examples are presented to illustrate the usefulness of the developed stabilization scheme.

Efficient Routing Protocol Based on Security for Wireless Sensor Networks

Nowadays, the major part and most standard networks usually used in several applications are Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). It consists of different nodes which communicate each other for data transmission. There is no access point to control the nodes in the network. This makes the network to undergo severe attacks from both passive and active devices. Due to this attack, the network undergoes downgrade performance. To overcome these attacks, security based routing protocol is proposed with the security based wormhole detection scheme. This scheme comprises of two phases. In this approach, the detection of wormhole attacks is deployed for having correct balance between safe route and stability. Also, to ensure packets integrity cryptographic scheme is used as well as authenticity while travelling from source to destination nodes. By extensive simulation, the proposed scheme achieves enhanced performance of packet delivery ratio, end to end delay, throughput and overhead than the existing schemes.

Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Resource Allocation for Fault Detection with Cloud Edge Collaboration in Smart Grid

Real-time fault detection is important for operation of smart grid.It has become a trend of future development to design an anomaly detection system based on deep learning by using the powerful computing power of the cloud.However,delay of Internet transmission is large,which may make the delay time of detection and transmission go beyond the limits.However,the edge-based scheme may not be able to undertake all data detection tasks due to limited computing resources of edge devices.Therefore,we propose a cloud-edge collaborative smart grid fault detection system,next to which edge devices are placed,and equipped with a lightweight neural network with different precision for fault detection.In addition,a sub-optimal and realtime communication and computing resource allocation method is proposed based on deep reinforcement learning.This method greatly speeds up solution time,which can meet the requirements of data transmission delay,maximize the system throughput,and improve communication efficiency.Simulation results show the scheme is superior in transmission delay and improves real-time performance of the smart grid detection system.

Communication Resources Allocation for Time Delay Reduction of Frequency Regulation Service in High Renewable Penetrated Power System

The high renewable penetrated power system has severe frequency regulation problems.Distributed resources can provide frequency regulation services but are limited by com-munication time delay.This paper proposes a communication resources allocation model to reduce communication time delay in frequency regulation service.Communication device resources and wireless spectrum resources are allocated to distributed resources when they participate in frequency regulation.We reveal impact of communication resources allocation on time delay reduction and frequency regulation performance.Besides,we study communication resources allocation solution in high renewable energy penetrated power systems.We provide a case study based on the HRP-38 system.Results show communication time delay decreases distributed resources'ability to provide frequency regulation service.On the other hand,allocating more communication resources to distributed resources'communica-tion services improves their frequency regulation performance.For power systems with renewable energy penetration above 70%,required communications resources are about five times as many as 30%renewable energy penetrated power systems to keep frequency performance the same.Index Terms-Communication resources allocation,commun-ication time delay,distributed resource,frequency regulation,high renewable energy penetrated power system.

Coordinated Multiple Spacecraft Attitude Control with Communication Time Delays and Uncertainties

In this paper, we consider the coordinated attitude control problem of spacecraft formation with communication delays, model and disturbance uncertainties, and propose novel synchronized control schemes. Since the attitude motion is essential in non-Euclidean space, thus, unlike the existing designs which describe the delayed relative attitude via linear algorithm, we treat the attitude error and the local relative attitude on the nonlinear manifold-Lie group, and attempt to obtain coupling attitude in- formation by the natural quatemion multiplication. Our main focus is to address two problems： 1） Propose a coordinated attitude controller to achieve the synchronized attitude maneuver, i.e., synchronize multiple spacecraft attitudes and track a time-varying desired attitude; 2） With known model information, we achieve the synchronized attitude maneuver with disturbances under angular velocity constraints. Especially, if the formation does not have any uncertainties, the designer can simply set the control- ler via an appropriate choice of control gains to avoid system actuator saturation. Our controllers are proposed based on the Lyapunov-Krasovskii method and simulation of a spacecraft formation is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of theoreti- cal results.

Consensus of single integrator multi-agent systems with directed topology and communication delays

In this paper, a distributed control scheme has been developed for consensus of single integrator multi-agent systems with directed fixed communication topology for arbitrarily large constant, time-varying or distributed communication delays. It is proved that the closed loop control system can reach consensus with an exponential convergence rate if and only if the topology is quasi-strongly connected. Simulation results are also provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

Robust attitude coordinated control for spacecraft formation with communication delays

In this paper,attitude coordinated tracking control algorithms for multiple spacecraft formation are investigated with consideration of parametric uncertainties,external disturbances,communication delays and actuator saturation.Initially,a sliding mode delay-dependent attitude coordinated controller is proposed under bounded external disturbances.However,neither inertia uncertainty nor actuator constraint has been taken into account.Then,a robust saturated delaydependent attitude coordinated control law is further derived,where uncertainties and external disturbances are handled by Chebyshev neural networks（CNN）.In addition,command filter technique is introduced to facilitate the backstepping design procedure,through which actuator saturation problem is solved.Thus the spacecraft in the formation are able to track the reference attitude trajectory even in the presence of time-varying communication delays.Rigorous analysis is presented by using Lyapunov-Krasovskii approach to demonstrate the stability of the closed-loop system under both control algorithms.Finally,the numerical examples are carried out to illustrate the efficiency of the theoretical results.

Impact of communication time delays on combined LFC and AVR of a multi-area hybrid system with IPFC-RFBs coordinated control strategy

In this paper,the impact of communication time delays(CTDs)on combined load frequency control(LFC)and automatic voltage regulation(AVR)of a multi-area system with hybrid generation units is addressed.Investigation reveals that CTDs have significant effect on system performance.A classical PID controller is employed as a secondary regulator and its parametric gains are optimized with a differential evolution-artificial electric field algorithm(DE-AEFA).The superior performance of the presented algorithm is established by comparing with various optimization algorithms reported in the literature.The investigation is further extended to integration of redox flow batteries(RFBs)and interline power flow controller(IPFC)with tie-lines.Analysis reveals that IPFC and RFBs coordinated control enhances system dynamic performance.Finally,the robustness of the proposed control methodology is validated by sensitivity analysis during wide variations of system parameters and load.

A Lyapunov Approach to Consensus of Linear Multi-Agent Systems with Infinite Distributed Communication Delays

This paper considers the leaderless consensus problem of linear time-invariant multi-agent systems with infinite distributed communication delays.A novel distributed low gain controller is proposed based on the solution to a parametric algebraic Riccati equation.It is shown via the newly developed Lyapunov-like method that not only the consensus of linear time-invariant multi-agent systems can be achieved exponentially under some mild assumptions but also an estimate of the exponential convergence rate of consensus is given in this work.The Lyapunovlike method is also extended to handle a special case of linear time-varying multi-agent systems.In addition,the obtained results include the results on the leaderless consensus of linear multiagent systems with bounded distributed communication delays as special cases.To the best of our knowledge,this is thefirst work that develops the Lyapunov-like method for the leaderless consensus problems of both time-invariant and time-varying linear multi-agent systems with infinite distributed communication delays.Finally,a numerical example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.