Time-varying formation control of multi-agent systems with dynamic event triggering strategies under denial-of-service attacks

In complex environments, the control performance of multi-agent systems (MASs) has faced increasing challenges recently. This paper addresses the time-varying formation control (TVFC) issue for MASs under denial-of-service (DoS) attacks by utilizing a dynamic event-triggered strategy. A general attack model is proposed to characterize DoS attacks based on frequency and duration constraints. Under attacks, MASs switch between unstable and stable modes. To reduce the agents’ dependency on global communication topology information and to decrease communication frequency, a distributed dynamic event-triggered TVFC protocol is designed. The TVFC problem is converted into a consensus issue of the error system through model transformation. Considering the impact of DoS attacks and dynamic event-triggered conditions, a Lyapunov function is constructed to constrain the attack and event-triggering parameters, ensuring that time-varying formation can still be achieved in an attack environment. Additionally, the designed event-triggered conditions are proven to effectively prevent Zeno behavior. Finally, the validity of the theoretical analysis is demonstrated through two examples.