Guest editorial: special issue on Consensus‐based Applications in Networked Systems

Abstract

Consensus, as an efficient distributed computing method, has been studied for several decades. The researchers within this area mainly focus on theoretical analysis of general consensus algorithm for different scenarios, for example, stability analysis under dynamic topologies and time delays, asynchronous and quantized consensus, and performance evaluation including convergence speed, accuracy, robustness, etc. However, existing works have rarely considered consensus in practical application scenarios, especially for the newly emerging distributed networked systems such as wireless sensor networks, cyber physical systems and smart grids, where there exist rich research opportunities in both theoretical and practical aspects. The objective of this special issue is to link the practical challenges and requirements with the theoretical advances in consensus. This special issue contains 17 papers that represent the state of the art in the research area of the consensus and its applications in networked systems. The papers address a variety of applications and cover a breadth of topics, ranging from theory to high-performance algorithms.Lu and Liu [1] focus on theoretical analysis of consensus, where the consensus problem for linear multi-agent systems subject to non-uniform time-varying communication delays and jointly connected switching networks is investigated. Both state feedback law and output feedback law are proposed to handle the consensus problem.Wu and Wang [2] investigate the problem of the mixed H2/H∞ synchronization control for the coupled partial differential systems. The sufficient conditions guaranteeing the existence of the solution are provided.Lei et al.[3] investigate security issues of consensus-based distributed estimation problem, considering the false data-injection attack. An optimal estimator is designed by minimizing the estimation error of each sensor under hostile attackers, and a set of suboptimal attacking sequence is provided. Nguyen and Dankowicz [4] investigate the synchronization and consensus problem of networked manipulators working on an underactuated-dynamic platform with communication delays. A leader-follower consensus scheme is proposed to track the constant and time-varying reference values. The tracking synchronization objective is achieved despite the effects of the communication delay and the unknown dynamics of the platform.Liu et al.[5] describe a dynamic coupling structure for the cluster synchronization problem with coupled-nonidentical linear systems. Lyapunov stability analysis method is used to obtain algebraic and graph topological conditions for cluster synchronization.Ou et al.[6] introduce methods for decentralized minimal-time formation control problems, including static and dynamic cases, respectively. The decentralized minimal-time static-formation method utilizes minimal polynomial to compute the final formation positions, and a Kroneckertheorem-based algorithm is proposed for the dynamic cases. Kempton et al. [7] propose a distributed-control approach ...