Robust and nonfragile consensus of positive multiagent systems via observer‐based output‐feedback protocols

This article investigates the consensus problem for positive multiagent systems via an observer‐based dynamic output‐feedback protocol. The dynamics of the agents are modeled by linear positive systems and the communication topology of the agents is expressed by an undirected connected graph. For the consensus problem, the nominal case is studied under the semidefinite programming framework while the robust and nonfragile cases are investigated under the linear programming framework. It is required that the distributed state‐feedback controller and observer gains should be structured to preserve the positivity of multiagent systems. Necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the analysis of consensus are obtained by using positive systems theory and graph theory. For the nominal case, necessary and sufficient conditions for the codesign of state‐feedback controller and observer of consensus are derived in terms of matrix inequalities. Sufficient conditions for the robust and nonfragile consensus designs are derived and the codesign of state‐feedback controller and observer can be obtained in terms of solving a set of linear programs. Numerical simulations are provided to show the effectiveness and applicability of the theoretical results and algorithms.     

Robust observer‐based output feedback controller for nonlinear systems with uncertain triangular and nontriangular nonlinearities and diagonal terms

In this paper, we provide a robust observer‐based output feedback control scheme for a class of nonlinear systems where there are uncertain triangular and nontriangular nonlinearities, nontrivial diagonal terms, and external disturbance. The presence of diagonal terms is the main generalized feature over the existing results. In order to handle the diagonal terms, there is a gain‐scaling factor in the proposed controller. Through the analysis, we show that all states and observer errors of the controlled system remain bounded. Moreover, the ultimate bounds of some states and observer errors can be made (arbitrarily) small by adjusting the gain‐scaling factor reflecting on the structure of nonlinearities and external disturbance. The validity of our control scheme is experimentally verified via the ball position control of an electromagnetic levitation system.     

Robust observer‐based stabilization of Lipschitz nonlinear uncertain systems via LMIs ‐ discussions and new design procedure

This paper presents a new observer‐based controller design method for Lipschitz nonlinear systems with uncertain parameters and ‐bounded disturbance inputs. In the presence of uncertain parameters, the separation principle is not applicable even in the case of linear time invariant systems. A state of the art review for uncertain linear systems is first presented to describe the shortcomings and conservatism of existing results for this problem. Then a new LMI‐based design technique is developed to solve the problem for both linear and Lipschitz nonlinear systems. The features of the new technique are the use of a new matrix decomposition, the allowance of additional degrees of freedom in design of the observer and controller feedback gains, the elimination of any need to use equality constraints, the allowance of uncertainty in the input matrix and the encompassing of all previous results under one framework. An extensive portfolio of numerical case studies is presented to illustrate the superiority of the developed design technique to existing results for linear systems from literature and to illustrate application to Lipschitz nonlinear systems. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fractional‐order–dependent global stability analysis and observer‐based synthesis for a class of nonlinear fractional‐order systems

This paper focuses on proposing novel conditions for stability analysis and stabilization of the class of nonlinear fractional‐order systems. First, by considering the class of nonlinear fractional‐order systems as a feedback interconnection system and applying small‐gain theorem, a condition is proposed for L₂‐norm boundedness of the solutions of these systems. Then, by using the Mittag‐Leffler function properties, we show that satisfaction of the proposed condition proves the global asymptotic stability of the class of nonlinear fractional‐order systems with fractional order lying in (0.5, 1) or (1.5, 2). Unlike the Lyapunov‐based methods for stability analysis of fractional‐order systems, the new condition depends on the fractional order of the system. Moreover, it is related to the H_∞‐norm of the linear part of the system and it can be transformed to linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) using fractional‐order bounded‐real lemma. Furthermore, the proposed stability analysis method is extended to the state‐feedback and observer‐based controller design for the class of nonlinear fractional‐order systems based on solving some LMIs. In the observer‐based stabilization problem, we prove that the separation principle holds using our method and one can find the observer gain and pseudostate‐feedback gain in two separate steps. Finally, three numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the advantage of the novel proposed conditions with the previous results.     

Self‐triggered state‐feedback control of linear plants under bounded disturbances

This paper addresses the problem of self‐triggered state‐feedback control for linear plants under bounded disturbances. In a self‐triggered scenario, the controller is allowed to choose when the next sampling time should occur and does so based on the current sampled state and on a priori knowledge about the plant. Besides comparing some existing approaches to self‐triggered control available in the literature, we propose a new self‐triggered control strategy that allows for the consideration of model‐based controllers, a class of controllers that includes as a special case static controllers with a zero‐order hold of the last state measurement. We show that our proposed control strategy renders the solutions of the closed‐loop system globally uniformly ultimately bounded. We further show that there exists a minimum time interval between sampling times and provide a method for computing a lower bound for it. An illustrative example with numerical results is included in order to compare the existing strategies and the proposed one. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Event‐triggered observer‐based robust H∞ control for networked control systems with unknown disturbance

In this article, the event‐triggered robust H_∞ control is studied for a class of uncertain networked control systems (NCSs) subject to unknown state and variable disturbance. First, aiming to decrease the unnecessary transmissions of sampled data, an efficient adaptive event‐triggered scheme (AETS) is presented, which can reflect the full real‐time variation of addressed NCSs and help to reduce the conservativeness. Second, based on the triggered output signals and disturbance model, two effective observers are, respectively, exploited to estimate the state and disturbance, which are further utilized to reject the disturbance and design the controller. By using the overall closed‐loop system and selecting an augmented Lyapunov‐Krasovskii functional, two sufficient conditions on jointly designing the adaptive event scheme, observers, and controller are established via linear matrix inequality forms, which can guarantee the global exponential stability and ensure H_∞ performance. Finally, some simulations and comparisons in a numerical example are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the derived results.     

State feedback controller design for anti‐synchronization of Boolean control networks: An event‐based idea

In this paper, we investigate the event‐based state feedback control for the anti‐synchronization of Boolean control networks (BCNs) under the configuration of drive‐response coupling. Two equivalence properties for the anti‐synchronization of BCNs are obtained by the algebraic representations of the logical dynamics. Based on the analysis of the event conditions, an algorithm is established to design the event‐based state feedback controller, and a necessary and sufficient condition guaranteeing the anti‐synchronization of the drive‐response coupled BCNs is formulated. An example is finally given to demonstrate the validity of the obtained results.     

Output feedback quantized observer‐based synchronization of linear multi‐agent systems over jointly connected topologies

The synchronization problem of linear over‐actuated multi‐agent systems with unmeasurable states is studied in this paper, under both limited communication data rate and switching topology flows. A class of adaptive quantized observer‐based encoding–decoding schemes and a class of certainty equivalence principle‐based control protocols are proposed. By developing the graph‐based space decomposition technique and analyzing the closed‐loop quantized dynamic equations, it is shown that if the network topology flow is jointly connected, the communication channels are periodic active, and the agent dynamics is observable, and with the orthogonal system matrix, the proposed communication and control protocols can ensure the closed‐loop system to achieve synchronization exponentially fast with finite bits of information exchange per step. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Output feedback semiglobal practical consensus of linear systems with relative state‐dependent uncertainties

This paper proposes an output feedback consensus control law for linear multiagent systems with relative state‐dependent uncertainties. To achieve output feedback control and uncertainty attenuation, the theories of extended high‐gain observer and structural decomposition are employed. Under the proposed control scheme, semiglobal practical consensus is achieved in the sense that the synchronization errors are ultimately bounded. Besides, the synchronization errors can be kept arbitrarily small by a proper choice of tuning parameters. Finally, a simulation example is provided to verify the theoretical results.     

Adaptive sliding mode observer‐based synchronization for uncertain chaotic systems

This paper investigates the synchronization problem for a class of uncertain chaotic systems. Only partial information of the system states is known. An adaptive sliding mode observer‐based slave system is designed to synchronize a given chaotic master system with unknown parameters and external disturbances. Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, the global synchronization between the master and slave systems is ensured. Furthermore, the structure of the slave system is simple and the proposed adaptive sliding mode observer‐based synchronization scheme can be implemented without requiring a priori knowledge of upper bounds on the norm of the uncertainties and external disturbances. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

New observer‐based controller design for LPV stochastic systems with multiplicative noise

This paper addresses an observer‐based control problem of Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) stochastic systems. Based on the modeling approaches, the LPV stochastic systems can be represented by a set of linear systems with multiplicative noise term. To solve the observer‐based control problem, a less conservative stability criterion is developed via the chosen Parameter‐Dependent Lyapunov Function (PDLF). In the PDLF, none element in the positive definite matrix is required as zero. Besides, an Extended Projection Lemma is proposed to convert the derived sufficient conditions into Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) form. According to the derived LMI conditions, all feasible solutions can be found by convex optimization algorithm at a single step. Based on those feasible solutions, an observer‐based Gain‐Scheduled (GS) controller can be established to guarantee the asymptotical stability of the closed‐loop system in the sense of mean square. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed method.     

Adaptive disturbance observer‐based control for stochastic systems with multiple heterogeneous disturbances

Antidisturbance control problem is discussed for stochastic systems with multiple heterogeneous disturbances, which include the white noise and the disturbance with unknown frequencies and amplitudes. An adaptive disturbance observer is designed to estimate the disturbance with unknown frequencies and amplitudes, based on which, an adaptive disturbance observer‐based control scheme is proposed by combining adaptive technique and linear matrix inequality method. It is proved that the closed‐loop system is asymptotically bounded in mean square when multiple heterogeneous disturbances exist simultaneously and that the equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable in probability as additive disturbance disappears. Finally, two simulation examples, including a wind turbine system, are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Parameterized LMIs for robust and state feedback control of continuous‐time polytopic systems

This paper presents new extended linear matrix inequality (LMI) characterizations for the synthesis of robust and state feedback controllers for continuous‐time linear time‐invariant systems with polytopic uncertainty. Based on a suitable change of variables and the Elimination Lemma, the proposed robust control design techniques are stated as extended LMI conditions parameterized in terms of 2 scalar parameters. One parameter is shown to belong to a bounded domain, thus limiting the scalar search domain. For the other parameter, a bounded subset is provided from numerical experiments. The benefits of the methodology are illustrated through numerical simulations performed on an uncertain model borrowed from the literature. It is shown that the proposed LMI relaxations can provide less conservative results with fewer scalar searches than some existing methods in the literature.     

Low dimensional disturbance observer‐based control for nonlinear parabolic PDE systems with spatio‐temporal disturbances

In this paper, a design problem of low dimensional disturbance observer‐based control (DOBC) is considered for a class of nonlinear parabolic partial differential equation (PDE) systems with the spatio‐temporal disturbance modeled by an infinite dimensional exosystem of parabolic PDE. Motivated by the fact that the dominant structure of the parabolic PDE is usually characterized by a finite number of degrees of freedom, the modal decomposition method is initially applied to both the PDE system and the PDE exosystem to derive a low dimensional slow system and a low dimensional slow exosystem, which accurately capture the dominant dynamics of the PDE system and the PDE exosystem, respectively. Then, the definition of input‐to‐state stability for the PDE system with the spatio‐temporal disturbance is given to formulate the design objective. Subsequently, based on the derived slow system and slow exosystem, a low dimensional disturbance observer (DO) is constructed to estimate the state of the slow exosystem, and then a low dimensional DOBC is given to compensate the effect of the slow exosystem in order to reject approximately the spatio‐temporal disturbance. Then, a design method of low dimensional DOBC is developed in terms of linear matrix inequality to guarantee that not only the closed‐loop slow system is exponentially stable in the presence of the slow exosystem but also the closed‐loop PDE system is input‐to‐state stable in the presence of the spatio‐temporal disturbance. Finally, simulation results on the control of temperature profile for catalytic rod demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Composite disturbance‐observer‐based control and H ∞ control for nonlinear time‐delay systems

A novel type of control scheme combined the distance‐observer‐based control (DOBC) with H_∞ control is proposed for a class of nonlinear time‐delay systems subject to disturbances. The disturbances are supposed to include two parts. One in the input channel is generated by an exogenous system with uncertainty, which can represent the harmonic signals with modeling perturbations. The other is supposed to have the bounded H₂ norm. The disturbance observers based on regional pole placement and D‐stability theory are presented, which can be designed separately from the controller design. By integrating disturbance‐observer‐based control with H_∞ control laws, the disturbances can be rejected and attenuated, simultaneously, the desired dynamic performances can be guaranteed for nonlinear time‐delay systems with unknown nonlinear dynamics. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Observer‐based finite‐time output‐feedback controller for DC‐DC buck converters with unknown load variations

The output voltage regulation problem of a DC‐DC buck converter is investigated in this paper via an observer‐based finite‐time output‐feedback control approach. Considering the effects of unknown load variations and the case without current sensor, by using the technique of adding a power integrator and the idea of nonseparation principle, a finite‐time voltage regulation control algorithm via dynamic output feedback is designed. The main feature of the designed observer and controller does not need any load's information. Theoretically, it is proven that the output voltage can reach the desired voltage in a finite time under the proposed controller. The effectiveness of the proposed control method is illustrated by numerical simulations and experimental results.     

Composite disturbance‐observer‐based control and H∞ control for complex continuous models

A novel type of control scheme combining the disturbance‐observer‐based control (DOBC) with H_∞ control is proposed for a class of complex continuous models with disturbances. The disturbances are supposed to include two parts. One part in the input channel is generated by an exogenous system with uncertainty, which can represent the harmonic signals with modeling perturbations. The other part is supposed to have the bounded H₂‐norm. Parametric uncertainties exist both in concerned plant and in exogenous subsystem. The disturbance observers based on regional pole placement and D‐stability theory are designed and integrated with conventional H_∞ control laws. The new composite DOBC and H_∞ control scheme is applied to complex continuous models for the case with known and unknown nonlinearity, respectively. Then the first type of disturbances can be estimated and rejected, and the second type can be attenuated; simultaneously, the desired dynamic performances can be guaranteed. Simulations for a flight control system are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the results and compare the proposed results with the previous schemes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distributed event‐triggered feedback consensus control with state‐dependent threshold for general linear multi‐agent systems

This paper considers the distributed event‐triggered consensus problem for multi‐agent systems with general linear dynamics under undirected graphs. Based on state feedback, we propose a novel distributed event‐triggered consensus controller with state‐dependent threshold for each agent to achieve consensus, without continuous communication in either controller update or triggering condition monitoring. Each agent only needs to monitor its own state continuously to determine if the event is triggered. It is proved that there is no Zeno behavior under the proposed consensus control algorithm. To relax the requirement of the state measurement of each agent, we further propose a novel distributed observer‐based event‐triggered consensus controller to solve the consensus problem in the case with output feedback and prove that there is no Zeno behavior exhibited. Finally, simulation results are given to illustrate the theoretical results. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design of a robust observer‐based memoryless H∞ control for internet congestion

This work is concerned with the transmission control protocol(TCP)‐based active queue management for alleviating Internet congestion. To achieve the objective, a novel robust observer‐based H_∞ control scheme is proposed to stabilize the data queue length of the router to a given target. The robust observer is advocated to reconstruct a substitution state of the TCP window size under uncertain Internet environments, wherein the TCP window size is almost impossible to be explicitly measured in practise. Meanwhile, a memoryless H_∞ controller is employed to guarantee the system asymptotical stability and further enhance the robustness. With the assistance of a unique nonlinear decoupling method, a feasible controller design method is presented in terms of linear matrix inequality. Compared with the existing literatures, the proposed control principle is more practical, and it can be conveniently implemented into the Internet routers while introduces less computational burden. Finally, the proposed result is embedded into Network Simulator 2 and compared with the other schemes in the literature. Numerical experiments illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design of full state feedback finite‐precision controllers

In this paper, the Generalized L2 Synthesis framework is brought to bear on the problem of control design of full state feedback finite‐precision controllers. In particular, we investigate the problem of designing full state feedback controllers that achieve guaranteed H‐infinity performance objectives, subject to finite precision constraints on the controller. It is shown that by adopting the Generalized L2 Synthesis framework, the errors in the controller implementation can be captured as full structured uncertainty, and computationally tractable linear matrix inequality techniques used for analysis and synthesis. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.