Distributed tracking control of mobile sensor networks with intermittent communications

This paper investigates the distributed tracking control problem of mobile sensor networks (MSNs) with intermittent communications. The MSNs are assumed to operate in a leader-following structure. When the communication network is accessible, the input of the leader is nonzero and unknown to the followers. When the communication is unavailable, the leader input is assumed to be zero. Based on intermittently available relative state information of neighboring sensors, a distributed tracking control method is proposed for the MSNs. A sufficient condition under which all follower sensors can track the leader under a fixed topology is derived using graph theory, non-smooth analysis and the switching system approach. Furthermore, an interesting design algorithm is proposed by which the tracking controller and the minimum admissible communication rate can be calculated simultaneously. The effectiveness of the results is demonstrated by numerical simulations.