Average sampled-data consensus driven by edge events

This paper considers the average consensus problem in networks of multiple integrators with unidirectional information links. To reduce the communication cost, we set up a scheme of sampled-data control driven by edge events for distributed state consensus. These edge events are defined independently for each information link, and their occurrence activates the mutually state sampling and controller update of the corresponding two neighboring agents. A set of event-triggering rules are first proposed for the asynchronous data sampling. They are implemented in a complete distributed fashion and no more information exchange is needed between event times. Then this result is further revised to incorporate periodically time-driven event detection. This treatment eliminates the possibility of infinitesimal inter-event time periods and also makes the presented protocol valid in the traditional sampled-data control framework.