Distributed Average Consensus based on Structural Weight-Balanceability

• Main Authors: Haghighi, Reza, Cheah, Chien Chern
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Distributed average consensus; Matrix algebra
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/82769; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/40326
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper presents the concept of structural weight-balanceability of network systems as a useful method to examine the average consensus of the systems. We introduce the notion of structurally unobservable node based on structural observability concept to determine the structural weightbalanceability of a network. We propose a simple technique to identify structurally unobservable nodes, and consequently infer on structural weight-balanceability of the network. A mathematical method based on principal minors of the associated Laplacian matrix of the network is developed to modify a structurally weight-balanceable network into a weight-balanced one. A distributed method is presented to compute normalized principal minors in a large-scale network system with directed communication topology. This is the first work that provides a rigorous mathematical formulation to check the structural weight-balanceability of network systems and make a structurally weight-balanceable network, weightbalanced. Finally, simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed method in dealing with networks with a large number of nodes.