Formation stabilization of underwater mobile sensing networks

Formation control is essential for an underwater mobile sensing network (UMSN), an ad hoc network which wirelessly connects underwater vehicles of sensing and/or observing types via acoustic communications, to fulfill mobile sensing tasks. The problem of formation control for an UMSN with varying topology is studied in this paper. The methodology of synthesizing distributed formation controller which stabilizes an UMSN with varying topology is proposed on the basis of the stability analysis of linear time-varying systems. A case study has also been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the design approach.