Consensus-Aware Co-design of Wireless Multi-Agent Control and Communication Systems
Autonomous multi-agent control systems (MACSs) enable distributed coordination in emerging applications such as smart power grids and autonomous vehicle or drone networks. In many of these applications, inter-agent communication relies on wireless networks. However, conventional MACS designs neglect the interaction between the communication and control subsystems. At the same time, conventional wireless designs reserve communication resources based on worst-case MACS requirements. Consequently, control performance is degraded and wireless resources are utilized inefficiently. To address these challenges, we propose a consensus-aware co-design approach for MACSs and wireless communication systems. We introduce a system model in which agents achieve consensus by exchanging information through device-to-device (D2D) links that share spectrum with cellular users under limited bandwidth resources. Based on this model, we formulate a joint optimization problem for consensus-topology selection and wireless resource allocation to minimize bandwidth consumption while guaranteeing consensus and satisfying the quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of both MACSs and cellular users. Although the resulting problem is a mixed-integer nonlinear program (NP-hard in general), a structural property of the optimal solution enables a sequential two-stage optimization algorithm with polynomial complexity. Simulations on a smart power grid case study demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves 24-27% bandwidth savings compared with the two baselines while maintaining consensus and satisfying all QoS requirements of the control agents and the communication users.