Tunable Passivity Control for Centralized Multiport Networked Systems

2025-11-07

AI Summary

Centralized multiport network dynamics (CMND) systems suffer from limited stability under non-ideal network conditions—e.g., time-varying delays—when relying on conventional passivity-based methods, which require subsystem passivity and minimum-phase assumptions, employ rigid compensation allocation, and lack scalability. Method: This paper proposes a centralized optimal passivity control framework that eliminates prior passivity requirements on subsystems. It achieves ℒ₂ stability via global energy observation and dynamic dissipation optimization, and introduces a data-driven, model-free centralized passivity observer coupled with an adaptive controller. A delay-aware energy-optimization strategy is embedded to handle time-varying communication delays. Contribution/Results: The proposed approach significantly enhances robustness, flexibility, and scalability of CMND systems, while effectively relaxing the passivity constraint on remote nodes—demonstrated through comprehensive simulations.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization
• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Centralized Multiport Networked Dynamic (CMND) systems have emerged as a key architecture with applications in several complex network systems, such as multilateral telerobotics and multi-agent control. These systems consist of a hub node/subsystem connecting with multiple remote nodes/subsystems via a networked architecture. One challenge for this system is stability, which can be affected by non-ideal network artifacts. Conventional passivity-based approaches can stabilize the system under specialized applications like small-scale networked systems. However, those conventional passive stabilizers have several restrictions, such as distributing compensation across subsystems in a decentralized manner, limiting flexibility, and, at the same time, relying on the restrictive assumptions of node passivity. This paper synthesizes a centralized optimal passivity-based stabilization framework for CMND systems. It consists of a centralized passivity observer monitoring overall energy flow and an optimal passivity controller that distributes the just-needed dissipation among various nodes, guaranteeing strict passivity and, thus, L2 stability. The proposed data-driven model-free approach, i.e., Tunable Centralized Optimal Passivity Control (TCoPC), optimizes total performance based on the prescribed dissipation distribution strategy while ensuring stability. The controller can put high dissipation loads on some sub-networks while relaxing the dissipation on other nodes. Simulation results demonstrate the proposed frameworks performance in a complex task under different time-varying delay scenarios while relaxing the remote nodes minimum phase and passivity assumption, enhancing the scalability and generalizability.

Problem

• Stabilizing centralized multiport networked systems affected by non-ideal network artifacts
• Overcoming limitations of conventional passive stabilizers with distributed compensation
• Ensuring system stability while relaxing restrictive node passivity assumptions

Innovation

• Centralized passivity observer monitors overall energy flow
• Optimal passivity controller distributes just-needed dissipation
• Tunable centralized optimal passivity control ensures stability