Robustness analysis and distributed control of a networked system with time-varying delays

This paper is concerned with the robustness analysis and distributed output feedback control of a networked system with uncertain time-varying communication delays. This system consists of a collection of linear time-invariant subsystems that are spatially interconnected via an arbitrary directed network. Using a dissipation inequality that incorporates dynamic hard IQCs (integral quadratic constraints) for the delay uncertainties, we derive some sufficient robustness conditions in the form of coupled linear matrix inequalities, in which the coupled parts reflect the interconnection structure of the system. We then provide a procedure to construct a distributed controller to ensure the robust stability of the closed-loop system and to achieve a prescribed $ell_2$-gain performance. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by some numerical examples.