Connective stability of distributed interconnected systems

In this paper, we study the connective stability of distributed interconnected systems under unreliable networks. The network topology of the system is captured by an arbitrary graph, where unreliable communications are modeled as the structured perturbation. We derive a sufficient condition for the connective stability of the distributed interconnected system and prove that such a group of systems is robust to signal fading, link failures or switching of network topology. Optimization of distributed controllers is discussed as well. An illustrative example is provided showing how connective stability contributes to stability in the sense of Lyapunov under unreliable networks.