Encoding–decoding-based distributed event-triggered sliding mode consensus control for multiagent systems under constrained bit rate

This paper investigates the distributed sliding mode consensus control problem for the continuous-time multi-agent systems (MASs) under the constrained bit rate, in which a quantization-based event-triggered encoding–decoding mechanism (ETEDM) is developed to compress the transmitted data between agents and lessen the burden on the limited bandwidth resources of digital communication networks. The lower bound of bit rate is modeled as the ratio of the encoding length to the minimum inter-execution time of the event-triggered protocol (ETP). In addition, a distributed estimator is adopted to estimate the state of each agent and generate event-triggered instants. Further, a dynamic parameter-based distributed sliding mode control (SMC) algorithm is formulated to reinforce the system’s robustness and suppress the chattering phenomenon. Subsequently, the Zeno phenomenon of ETP is eliminated and the required bit rate condition for the decoding error to be bounded is deduced. By the theory of linear matrix inequalities, a sufficient criterion under the bit rate allocation scheme is given to guarantee that the consensus tracking error is exponentially ultimately bounded (EUB) and the solution of the controller’s gain matrix is parameterized. Finally, the validity of the developed control approach is verified by a set of two-mass–spring systems.