Optimal Control of Spatially Distributed Systems

In this paper, we study the structural properties of optimal control of spatially distributed systems. Such systems consist of an infinite collection of possibly heterogeneous linear control systems that are spatially interconnected via certain distant dependent coupling functions over arbitrary graphs. The key idea of the paper is the introduction of a special class of operators called spatially decaying (SD) operators. We study the structural properties of infinite-horizon linear quadratic optimal controllers for such systems by analyzing the spatial structure of the solution to the corresponding operator Lyapunov and Riccati equations. We prove that the kernel of the optimal feedback of each subsystem decays in the spatial domain at a rate proportional to the inverse of the corresponding coupling function of the system.