Stability and convergence of nonlinear systems having a continuum of equilibria and time-varying delays

In this paper, we develop a semistability analysis framework for nonlinear systems with time-varying delays with applications to stability and convergence analysis of multiagent dynamic networks with consensus protocols in the presence of unknown heterogeneous time-varying delays along the communication links. We show that for such a nonlinear system having a continuum of equilibria, if the system asymptotically converges to a constant time-delay system and this new system is semistable, then the original time-varying delay system is semistable, provided that the delays are just bounded, not necessarily differentiable. In proving our results, we extend the limiting equation approach to the time-varying delay systems and also develop some new convergence results for functional differential equations.