Controlling across complex networks - Emerging links between networks and control

The presence of communication networks in the feedback path of a control system has led to new problems for control designers. Meanwhile, physicists, computer scientists, and mathematicians have been studying the formation and properties of physical networks under the heading of complex networks. Control engineers use a network model to facilitate controller design, while complex network theorists investigate networks to model their dynamics and growth. Despite the use of distinct analysis tools, network properties such as connectivity, efficiency, and robustness are common to both control and complex networks research. A question that naturally arises is whether ideas used by the complex network community can suggest new control design directions. In this chapter we review the tools from the network theoristOs arsenal to make them available to control engineers, and describe how ideas developed for complex network research can be exploited within a control systems framework.