The Time‐Varying Coding Length Scheme Consensus Control of Multi‐Agent Systems Based on an Adaptive Quantizer

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the consensus problem of multi‐agent systems (MASs) with parameter uncertainties under bandwidth‐limited communication networks. During information transmission, limited bandwidth resources may lead to increased encoding errors, packet losses, and reduced throughput performance. To enhance bandwidth resource utilization, an adaptive quantizer with a time‐varying coding and decoding length scheme is employed to improve coding accuracy. The primary objective of this article is to design a controller such that the MASs can achieve consensus by employing an adaptive quantizer with a time‐varying coding and decoding length scheme and a proper packet length, which can effectively mitigate the adverse effects of coding errors and packet losses on control performance. Following Lyapunov stability theory, a sufficient condition is subsequently established to ensure that the system achieves exponentially ultimately bounded (EUB) performance. Then, the relationship between packet coding length combinations and the coding error is analyzed, and the controller gains are obtained by solving the LMI. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is demonstrated through a numerical example.