This paper presents scalable controller synthesis methods for heterogeneous and partially heterogeneous systems. First, heterogeneous systems composed of different subsystems that are interconnected over a directed graph are considered. Techniques from robust and gain-scheduled controller synthesis are employed, in particular the full-block S-procedure, to deal with the decentralized system part in a nominal condition and with the interconnection part in a multiplier condition. Under some structural assumptions, we can decompose the synthesis conditions into conditions that are the size of the individual subsystems. To solve these decomposed synthesis conditions that are coupled only over neighboring subsystems, we propose a distributed method based on the alternating direction method of multipliers. It only requires nearest-neighbor communication and no central coordination is needed. Then, a new classification of systems is introduced that consists of groups of homogeneous subsystems with different interconnection types. This classification includes heterogeneous systems as the most general and homogeneous systems as the most specific case. Based on this classification, we show how the interconnected system model and the decomposed synthesis conditions can be formulated in a more compact way. The computational scalability of the presented methods with respect to a growing number of subsystems and interconnections is analyzed, and the results are demonstrated in numerical examples.
The problem of mitigating maliciously injected signals in interconnected systems is dealt with in this paper. We consider the class of covert attacks, as they are stealthy and cannot be detected by conventional means in centralized settings. Distributed architectures can be leveraged for revealing such stealthy attacks by exploiting communication and local model knowledge. We show how such detection schemes can be improved to estimate the action of an attacker and we propose an accommodation scheme in order to mitigate or neutralize abnormal behavior of a system under attack.
This paper formulates a framework for the analysis and distributed control of interconnected systems from the behavioural perspective. The discussions are carried out from the viewpoint of set theory and the results are completely representation-free. The core of a dynamical system can be represented as the set of all trajectories admissible through the system and interconnections are interpreted as constraints on the choice of trajectories. We develop a structure in which the interconnected behaviour can be directly built from the behaviours of the subsystems in an explicit way without any pr…
This paper proposes a novel method for distributed controller synthesis of homogeneous interconnected systems consisting of identical subsystems. The objective of the designed controller is to minimize the L2-gain of the performance channel. The proposed method is an extended formulation of the Full Block S-Procedure (FBSP) where we introduce an additional set of variables. This allows relaxing the block-diagonal structural assumptions on the Lyapunov and multiplier matrices required for distributed control design, which reduces conservatism w.r.t most existing approaches. We show how to decom…
This paper is concerned with the problem of distributed estimation for time-varying interconnected dynamic systems with arbitrary coupling structures. To guarantee the robustness of the designed estimators, novel distributed stability conditions are proposed with only local information and the information from neighbors. Then, simplified stability conditions which do not require timely exchange of neighbors' estimator gain information is further developed for systems with delayed communication. By merging these subsystem-level stability conditions and the optimization-based estimator gain desi…
The current limitation in the synthesis of distributed $\mathscr{H}_2$ controllers for linear interconnected systems is scalability due to non-convex or unstructured synthesis conditions. In this paper we develop convex and structured conditions for the existence of a distributed $\mathscr{H}_2$ controller for discrete-time interconnected systems with an interconnection structure that corresponds to an arbitrary graph. Neutral interconnections and a storage function with a block-diagonal structure are utilized to attain coupling conditions that are of a considerably lower computational complex…
This paper proposed a distributed filter for spatially interconnected systems (SISs), which considers missing measurements in the sensors of sub-systems. An SIS is established by many similar sub-systems that directly interact or communicate with connective neighbors. Despite that the interactions are simple and tractable, the overall SIS can perform rich and complex behaviors. In actual projects, sensors of sub-systems in a sensor network may break down sometimes, which causes parts of the measurements unavailable unexpectedly. In this work, distributed characteristics of SISs are described b…
The increase in available data and complexity of dynamical systems has sparked the research on data-based system performance analysis and controller design. Recent approaches can guarantee performance and robust controller synthesis based on noisy input-state data of a single dynamical system. In this paper, we extend a recent data-based approach for guaranteed performance analysis to distributed analysis of interconnected linear systems. We present a new set of sufficient LMI conditions based on noisy input-state data that guarantees $\mathcal{H}_\infty$ performance and have a structure that …
Resilient Distributed Energy Management for Systems of Interconnected Microgrids
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya（加泰罗尼亚理工大学）；Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (CSIC-UPC)（机器人与工业信息学研究所）；Tokyo Institute of Technology（东京工业大学）；University of Seville（塞维利亚大学）
A graph theoretic framework recently has been proposed to stabilize interconnected multiagent systems in a distributed fashion, while systematically capturing the architectural aspect of cyber-physical systems with separate agent or physical layer and control or cyber layer. Based on that development, in addition to the modeling uncertainties over the agent layer, we consider a scenario where the control layer is subject to the denial of service attacks. We propose a step-by-step procedure to design a control layer that, in the presence of the aforementioned abnormalities, guarantees a level o…
A design framework recently has been developed to stabilize interconnected multiagent systems in a distributed manner, and systematically capture the architectural aspect of cyber-physical systems. Such a control theoretic framework, however, results in a stabilization protocol which is passive with respect to the cyber attacks and conservative regarding the guaranteed level of resiliency. We treat the control layer topology and stabilization gains as the degrees of freedom, and develop a mixed control and cybersecurity design framework to address the above concerns. From a control perspective…
Consensusability of multi-agent systems (MASs) certifies the existence of a distributed controller capable of driving the states of each subsystem to a consensus value. We study the consensusability of linear interconnected MASs (LIMASs) where, as in several real-world applications, subsystems are physically coupled. We show that consensusability is related to the simultaneous stabilizability of multiple LTI systems, and present a novel sufficient condition in form of a linear program for verifying this property. We also derive several necessary and sufficient consensusability conditions for L…
The paper deals with the problem of distributed fault detection and isolation (FDI) for a group of heterogeneous multi-agent systems. The developed formation for the FDI is taken into account as a distributed observer design methodology, where the interaction between the agent and its neighbors is described as a vector of distributed relative output measurements. Based on two performance indexes $\mathcal{H}_2$ and $\mathcal{H}_{-}$, sufficient conditions are given to ensure the residual signals robust to the disturbances and sensitive with respect to the fault signals. In addition, we show th…
This paper derives distributed conditions that guarantee the system-wide stability for power systems with nonlinear and heterogeneous bus dynamics interconnected via power network. Our conditions require each bus dynamics should satisfy certain passivity-like conditions with a large enough passivity index, a sufficient requirement of which is dictated by the steady-state power flow. The passivity indices uniformly quantify the impacts on the system-wide stability of individual bus dynamics and the coupling strength from the power network. Furthermore, taking three typical bus dynamics as examp…
Distributed Verification of Structural Controllability for Linear Time-Invariant Systems
Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon（里斯本大学高等理工学院）；Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）；University of Porto (FEUP)（波尔图大学）；KTH Royal Institute of Technology（皇家理工学院）
Synchronization is a crucial phenomenon in many natural and artificial complex network systems. Applications include neuronal networks, formation control and coordination in robotics, and frequency synchronization in electrical power grids. In this paper, we propose the use of a distributed discontinuous coupling protocol to achieve convergence and synchronization in networks of non-identical nonlinear dynamical systems. We show that the synchronous dynamics is a solution to the average of the nodes' vector fields, and derive analytical estimates of the critical coupling gains required to achi…
Distributed Model Predictive Control for Optimal Consensus of Constrained Heterogeneous Multi-agent Systems
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；The University of Hong Kong（香港大学）；HKU Shenzhen Institute of Research and Innovation（香港大学深圳研究院创新）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；Peking University（北京大学）
We develop a novel decentralized control method for a network of perturbed linear systems with dynamical couplings subject to Signal Temporal Logic (STL) specifications. We first transform the STL requirements into set containment problems and then we develop controllers to solve these problems. Our approach is based on treating the couplings between subsystems as disturbances, which are bounded sets that the subsystems negotiate in the form of parametric assume-guarantee contracts. The set containment requirements and parameterized contracts are added to the subsystems' constraints. We introd…
Operating modern power grids with stability guarantees is admittedly imperative. Classic stability methods are not well-suited for these dynamic systems as they involve centralized gathering of information and computation of the system's eigenvalues, processes which are oftentimes not privacy-preserving and computationally burdensome. System operators (SOs) would nowadays have to be able to quickly and efficiently assess small-signal stability as the power grid operating conditions change more dynamically while also respect the privacy of the distributed energy resources (DERs). Motivated by a…
In this paper, we propose and experimentally validate a scheduling and control framework for distributed energy resources (DERs) that achieves to track a day-ahead dispatch plan of a distribution network hosting controllable and stochastic heterogeneous resources while respecting the local grid constraints on nodal voltages and lines ampacities. The framework consists of two algorithmic layers. In the first one (day-ahead scheduling), we determine an aggregated dispatch plan. In the second layer (real-time control), a distributed model predictive control (MPC) determines the active and reactiv…
Conditions for detectability in distributed consensus-based observer networks
School of Engineering and IT, University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy（新南威尔士大学澳大利亚国防军学院工程与信息技术学院）；Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学）
In this paper, we present a model-based frequency controller for microgrids with nonzero line resistances based on a port-Hamiltonian formulation of the microgrid model and real-time dynamic pricing. The controller is applicable for conventional generation with synchronous machines as well as for power electronics interfaced sources and it is robust against power fluctuations from uncontrollable loads or volatile regenerative sources. The price-based formulation allows additional requirements such as active power sharing to be met. The capability and effectiveness of our procedure is demonstra…
We propose a distributed deployment solution for a group of mobile agents that should provide a service for a dense set of targets. The agents are heterogeneous in a sense that their quality of service (QoS), modeled as a spatial Gaussian distribution, is different. To provide the best service, the objective is to deploy the agents such that their collective QoS distribution is as close as possible to the density distribution of the targets. We propose a distributed consensus-based expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to estimate the target density distribution, modeled as a Gaussian mixtur…
In this paper, the problem of synthesizing a distributed controller from data is considered, with the objective to optimize a model-reference control criterion. We establish an explicit ideal distributed controller that solves the model-reference control problem for a structured reference model. On the basis of input-output data collected from the interconnected system, a virtual experiment setup is constructed which leads to a network identification problem. We formulate a prediction-error identification criterion that has the same global optimum as the model-reference criterion, when the con…
A group behavior of a heterogeneous multi-agent system is studied which obeys an "average of individual vector fields" under strong couplings among the agents. Under stability of the averaged dynamics (not asking stability of individual agents), the behavior of heterogeneous multi-agent system can be estimated by the solution to the averaged dynamics. A following idea is to "design" individual agent's dynamics such that the averaged dynamics performs the desired task. A few applications are discussed including estimation of the number of agents in a network, distributed least-squares or median…
In this work we study a distributed optimal output consensus problem for heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems where the agents aim to reach consensus with the purpose of minimizing the sum of private convex costs. Based on output feedback, a fully distributed control law is proposed by using the proportional-integral (PI) control technique. For strongly convex cost functions with Lipschitz gradients, the designed controller can achieve convergence exponentially in an undirected and connected network. Furthermore, to remove the requirement of continuous communications, the proposed control …
A small-gain approach is proposed to analyze closed-loop stability of linear diffusion-reaction systems under finite-dimensional observer-based state feedback control. For this, the decomposition of the infinite-dimensional system into a finite-dimensional slow subsystem used for design and an infinite-dimensional residual fast subsystem is considered. The effect of observer spillover in terms of a particular (dynamic) interconnection of the subsystems is thoroughly analyzed for in-domain and boundary control as well as sensing. This leads to the application of a small-gain theorem for interco…
We present a distributed control law to assemble a cluster of satellites into an equally-spaced, planar constellation in a desired circular orbit about a planet. We assume each satellite only uses local information, transmitted through communication links with neighboring satellites. The same control law is used to maintain relative angular positions in the presence of disturbance forces. The stability of the constellation in the desired orbit is proved using a compositional approach. We first show the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium of the interconnected system. We then certify eac…
This paper develops a distributed solution to the fully-heterogeneous containment control problem (CCP), for which not only the followers' dynamics but also the leaders' dynamics are non-identical. A novel formulation of the fully-heterogeneous CCP is first presented in which each follower constructs its virtual exo-system. To build these virtual exo-systems by followers, a novel distributed algorithm is developed to calculate the so-called normalized level of influences (NLIs) of all leaders on each follower and a novel adaptive distributed observer is designed to estimate the dynamics and st…
This paper presents one of the first real-life demonstrations of coordinated and distributed resource control for secondary frequency response in a power distribution grid. We conduct a series of tests with up to 69 heterogeneous active devices consisting of air handling units, unidirectional and bidirectional electric vehicle charging stations, a battery energy storage system, and 107 passive devices consisting of building loads and photovoltaic generators. Actuation commands for the test devices are obtained by solving an economic dispatch problem at every regulation instant using distribute…
Approximate Gradient Coding for Distributed Learning with Heterogeneous Stragglers
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology School of Electrical Engineering（韩国科学技术院电子工程学院）；Seoul National University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering（首尔国立大学电气与计算机工程学院）
