Adaptive Secure Consensus for Nonlinear Multiagent Systems With Distributed Sequential Link Attacks Under General Directed Graphs

ABSTRACT This article introduces a novel adaptive secure consensus strategy for achieving secure consensus in nonlinear multi‐agent systems (MASs) against distributed sequential link attacks under general directed graphs, which can be implemented in a fully distributed manner. First, communication network attacks on MASs are modeled as distributed sequential link attacks. An adaptive secure consensus protocol is then designed for nonlinear MASs to achieve fully distributed secure consensus under general directed graphs. Moreover, by decomposing the Laplacian matrix of general directed graphs, secure consensus criteria for nonlinear MASs against distributed sequential link attacks are presented, unifying leaderless and leader‐follower structures into a single control framework. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is demonstrated through a simulation example.