Group consensus of discrete-time multi-agent systems with fixed and stochastic switching topologies

Abstract

This paper investigates the group consensus problem for discrete-time multi-agent systems with a fixed topology and stochastic switching topologies. The stochastic switching topologies are assumed to be governed by a finite-time Markov chain. The group consensus problem of the multi-agent systems is converted into the stability problem of the error systems by a model transformation. Based on matrix theory and linear system theory, we obtain two necessary and sufficient conditions of couple-group consensus for the case of fixed topology, and one necessary and sufficient condition of mean-square couple-group consensus for the case of stochastic switching topologies. Algorithms are provided to design the feasible control gains. Then, the results are extended to the case of multi-group consensus. Finally, simulation examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed results.