Travelling waves in a multi-agent system with general graph topology∗

The paper presents a novel approach for the analysis of a multi-agent system with arbitrary interaction topology and identical agents. The approach is based on an irrational transfer function, the Wave transfer function, that decomposes the interactions between the agents and identifies the travelling waves in the multi-agent system. The approach based on the travelling waves describes the behaviour of the system from the local perspective, which is complementary to the traditional overall approach. The proposed approach allows us, for example, to describe the local effect of the agents that have more than two neighbours.