Consensus in time-delayed multi-agent systems with quantized dwell times

This paper investigates the effects of quantized dwell times in solving consensus problems in time-delayed multi-agent systems with the asynchronous property of unpredictable quantization jumps in inter-agent communications. The quantized dwell times can be introduced on purpose or be inherent from quantizing devices. They beneficially avoid undesirable fast chattering of quantizers’ outputs and mathematical difficulties in convergence analysis. The main result shows that the largest eigenvalue of the interaction graph Laplacian well characterizes the dependence of maximum allowable time delay on quantized dwell times and quantizer parameters under the assumption of heterogeneous time-varying transmission delays. Simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of the main result.