Stability of a Second Order Leader-Follower Consensus Protocol With Partial Access to the Leader and Communication and Input Delays

This paper revisits an earlier investigation on a leader-follower consensus problem [1] affected by multiple time delays. The new perspective is in the use of a novel analysis technique which provides exact, exhaustive and explicit stability margins in the domain of the time delay. This methodology resides within the Cluster Treatment of Characteristic Roots (CTCR) paradigm, which is applied after a block diagonalization of the system takes place. Further novelty is described in the first stage of CTCR. At this step, the determination of the potential stability switching curves is achieved utilizing the concept of Spectral Delay Space, SDS. Example cases are provided in order to show the effectiveness of this procedure, and its advantages with respect to the peer treatments.