Collective Behaviors of NDSs with Communication Constraints

A networked distributed system (NDS), such as complex dynamical networks, multi-agent systems and sensor networks, is a system consisting of a collection of spatially distributed autonomous agents connected by networked communication to produce an integrated and consistent behavior or task. Networked distributed systems (NDSs) can enable the agents to cooperate and coordinate their activities more effectively and efficiently. Typical collective behaviors, such as synchronization, target tracking and stabilization, have been intensively studied in recent years. Information exchange among nodes plays a critical role to realize these behaviors. However, communication constraints are unavoidable in real-world NDSs. In this book, several important and widely-existed communication constraints, such as partial information transmission, sampled data and data packet dropout, are studied in NDSs. The regrouping method is introduced to handle the partial information transmission. Based on this new method, a unified framework is established to investigate multiple communication constraints. Sufficient conditions are proposed to ensure various collective behaviors of NDSs.