Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication for Consensus Control in Multi-Agent Systems

A scenario of multiple agents working together to accomplish a common task is considered. Consensus control facilitates the coordination among the agents over time till they accomplish the task. In this paper, we consider formation control using consensus in which agents coordinate to form a circle. To make the coordination possible, agents need to periodically exchange their positions using orthogonal transmissions through a band-limited wireless channel which encounters different transmission delays on different links. To guarantee over all agents stability and convergence, we optimize the bandwidth allocation for equal rate transmission, which maintains the synchronization among agents. Moreover, we minimize the convergence time by optimizing the weights of the consensus algorithm. An ultra-reliable low latency communication between agents is guaranteed by transmitting short packets. The simulation results show that jointly optimizing the confidence weights and bandwidth allocation greatly reduces the convergence time as compared to conventional schemes.

[1]  Karl Henrik Johansson,et al.  Consensus under communication delays , 2008, 2008 47th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

[2]  Gustavo de Veciana,et al.  Joint Scheduling of URLLC and eMBB Traffic in 5G Wireless Networks , 2017, IEEE INFOCOM 2018 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications.

[3]  Pierre-Alexandre Bliman,et al.  Average consensus problems in networks of agents with delayed communications , 2005, Proceedings of the 44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

[4]  Michael G. Rabbat,et al.  The Impact of Communication Delays on Distributed Consensus Algorithms , 2012, ArXiv.

[5]  Daqiang Zhang,et al.  Towards smart factory for industry 4.0: a self-organized multi-agent system with big data based feedback and coordination , 2016, Comput. Networks.

[6]  Ismail Güvenç,et al.  Drones for smart cities: Issues in cybersecurity, privacy, and public safety , 2016, 2016 International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC).

[7]  Mireille E. Broucke,et al.  Formations of vehicles in cyclic pursuit , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[8]  Zhiqi Shen,et al.  From Internet of Things to Internet of Agents , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Green Computing and Communications and IEEE Internet of Things and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing.

[9]  Donato Di Paola,et al.  IoT-aided robotics applications: Technological implications, target domains and open issues , 2014, Comput. Commun..

[10]  Mevludin Glavic,et al.  Agents and Multi-Agent Systems: A Short Introduction for Power Engineers , 2006 .

[11]  Branka Vucetic,et al.  Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Cellular Networks: Use Cases, Challenges and Approaches , 2017, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[12]  M. Fiedler Algebraic connectivity of graphs , 1973 .

[13]  Chen-Ching Liu,et al.  Multi-agent systems and their applications , 2017 .

[14]  Richard M. Murray,et al.  Consensus problems in networks of agents with switching topology and time-delays , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[15]  Petar Popovski,et al.  Coexistence of URLLC and eMBB Services in the C-RAN Uplink: An Information-Theoretic Study , 2018, 2018 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[16]  H. Vincent Poor,et al.  Channel Coding Rate in the Finite Blocklength Regime , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[17]  Asuman E. Ozdaglar,et al.  Rate of Convergence for Consensus with Delays , 2008, 2008 47th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

[18]  Peng Cheng,et al.  Performance Analysis of Discrete-Time Average Consensus under Uniform Constant Time Delays , 2017 .

[19]  Erik G. Ström,et al.  Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC): Principles and Building Blocks , 2017, ArXiv.

[20]  Frank H. P. Fitzek,et al.  Joint Design of Communication and Control for Connected Cars in 5G Communication Systems , 2016, 2016 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps).

[21]  Reza Olfati-Saber,et al.  Consensus and Cooperation in Networked Multi-Agent Systems , 2007, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[22]  Chenyang Yang,et al.  Radio Resource Management for Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications , 2017, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[23]  Gang Feng,et al.  Consensus of homogeneous linear multi-agent systems with time-varying communication delays , 2016, 2016 24th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED).

[24]  Erik G. Ström,et al.  Wireless Access for Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication: Principles and Building Blocks , 2018, IEEE Network.