Output Synchronization of Multi-Agent Systems with Event-Driven Communication : Communication Delay and Signal Quantization

In this paper, we study the output synchronization problem o f multi-agent systems with event-driven communication, in which the data transmissions among neighborin g agents are event-based rather than pre-scheduled periodically. We propose a set-up for the coupled agents to a chieve output synchronization with event-driven communication in the presence of constant communication de lays by using scattering transformation. Thus, whenever the agent satisfies its triggering condition, a scattering v ariable which contains the current output information of the agent will be sent to its corresponding neighbors, and th e neighbors will extract reference information from its received scattering variables for its own control actio n update. Quantization effects on output synchronization with event-driven communication have also been studied. Th e result presented in the current paper is an important extension of applying event-driven communication to contr l of multi-agent systems, especially when it is difficult to derive a common upper bound on the admissible network induce d delays based on the event-triggering condition or when the network induced delays between coupled agents are l arg r than the inter-event time implicitly determined by the event triggering condition. Index Terms output synchronization, event-driven communication, qua ntiz tion effects, communication delay, passivity, graph theory, control of multi-agent systems