Bit-Rate Conditions for the Consensus of Quantized Multiagent Systems Based on Event Triggering.

Abstract

This article investigates the asymptotic consensus problem for multiple discrete-time agents with general dynamics under event-triggered sampling. In such multiagent systems (MASs), the information exchanged between neighboring agents is quantized and transmitted through a digital communication network. Due to the limited bandwidth, it is impossible for agents to capture the precise states of neighbors and only their quantized version can be received, which may degrade or even break the consensus of these MASs. In order to ensure the desired consensus and save the occupied network bandwidth, a model-based event-triggering strategy is well co-designed with a dynamic quantization method. Under the proposed strategy, the error between the real state and its estimated version at neighbors is always bounded by an event-triggering function, which is also taken to compute an upper bound on the control inputs of all agents. We derive a sufficient bit-rate condition required for the desired asymptotic consensus. That condition is mainly determined by the dynamics and communication network topology of agents. Since our event-triggering strategy takes advantage of the extra information extracted from the event-triggering time instants of all feedback packets, the derived bit rate can be lower than that of the conventional periodic sampling strategies, while still ensuring the consensus of the concerned MAS. Simulations are done to illustrate the advantages of the derived bit-rate condition.