Necessary and sufficient conditions of stationary average consensus for second-order multi-agent systems

This paper investigates the stationary average consensus problem for second-order discrete-time multi-agent systems (SDMAS). A stationary consensus problem is to find a control algorithm that brings the state of a group of agents to a common constant value which is called the collective decision. We introduce the concept of stationary average consensus of SDMAS and propose a consensus algorithm. Based on the polynomial stability and the graph theory, we obtain two necessary and sufficient conditions of stationary average consensus of SDMAS. The last theorem provides an algebraic criterion of stationary average consensus, and can help us to determine the parameters in the consensus algorithm. Furthermore, in this consensus algorithm, only the states of the agents are transferred among the agents. Therefore, this algorithm can not only solve the stationary average consensus problem but also reduce the amount of transferred data. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the efficiency of our results.