Investigating the effect of edge modifications on networked control systems: Stability analysis

This paper investigates the impact of addition/removal/reweighting of edges in a complex networked linear control system. For networks of positive edge weights, we show that when adding edges leads to the creation of new cycles, these in turn may lead to instabilities. Dynamically, these cycles correspond to positive feedback loops. Conditions are provided under which the modified network is guaranteed to be stable. These conditions are related to the steady state value of the transfer function matrix of the newly created positive feedbacks. The tools we develop in the paper can be used to investigate the fragility of a network, i.e., its robustness to structured perturbations.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Funding Agencies|Swedish Research Council [2020-03701]