Strong targeted controllability of multi-agent systems with time-varying topologies over finite fields

Abstract

In this paper, we study the strong targeted controllability of multi-agent systems with time-varying topologies over finite fields from a graph theoretic perspective. We consider leader–follower networks, where only some of the agents are governed by external control inputs, namely the leaders. We develop a graph-theoretic characterization for strong targeted controllability of multi-agent systems with time-varying topologies over finite fields. Specifically, we show that a time-varying multi-agent system is strongly targeted controllable over any finite field if the graphs of the system satisfy certain properties. Our main results are applicable to time-varying topologies with arbitrary fields and coupling weights. We also present a necessary and sufficient condition for the strong structural controllability of the time-invariant multi-agent systems.