Consensusability of multi-agent systems with time-varying communication delay

This paper studies the consensusability problem of continuous-time multi-agent systems with time-varying communication delay in undirected network. We design a consensus protocol based on the low gain solution of a parametric algebraic Riccati equation (ARE) and not use the precise information of the amount of time-varying delay. By studying the joint effect of agent dynamic and network topology, sufficient conditions are given for consensus when all poles of the system matrix are on the closed left-half plane. In case of non-zero poles on the imaginary axis, maximal admissible upper bound of the time-varying delay is given in terms of both the agent dynamic and network topology; otherwise, consensus can be achieved for the time-varying delay with arbitrarily large upper bound. Finally, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.