Sampled-data-based consensus of continuous-time systems with limited data rate

Leader-following consensus is investigated for second-order continuous-time multi-agent systems with limited communication data rate in this study. The network communication topology is directed and static. Using the sampled position and velocity data, a corresponding discrete-time system, whose leader-following consensus is proved to be equivalent to that of the original system, is given. A distributed protocol is proposed based on dynamic encoding and decoding. A necessary and sufficient condition is given for the existence of such communication and control protocol to ensure the achievement of leaderfollowing consensus, if the upper bound of the communication data rate is predetermined. Two algorithms are also presented to achieve the leader-following consensus if the communication data rate is unfixed or limited, respectively. Finally, simulation examples are given to verify and illustrate the theoretical analysis.