Pinning exponential boundedness of fractional-order multi-agent systems with intermittent combination event-triggered protocol

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper mainly deals with the exponential boundedness of fractional-order multi-agent systems (FOMSs). A novel controller, intermittent combination event-triggered strategy, is proposed to save more control resources. Unlike the traditional event-triggered mechanism, the combined event-triggered strategy includes the item of the error function and exponential function. The communication between agents is intermittent. Under the pinning control, only a few agents can receive information from the virtual leader. By utilising the designed controller, sufficient conditions for exponential boundedness of FOMSs are gained along with fractional-order Lyapunov methods, the monotonicity of the Mittag-Leffler function and matrix analysis. The article also investigates the consensus of FOMSs via pinning combination event-triggered control without the intermittent mechanism through the same analytical approach. The Zeno behaviour is also excluded. Simulations are given to verify the availability and applicability of the designed protocol. Experiments demonstrate that the combined event-triggered mechanism can reduce the number of event triggers.