Quantized Distributed Fractional-Order Cooperative Resilient Tracking Control of Nonlinear MASs With Prescribed Performance

This article studies the distributed quantized tracking control problem with prescribed output performance requirements for uncertain nonlinear integer high-order multiagent systems (MASs) with both Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks and external unknown disturbances under data-rate-constrained communication networks. A hierarchical control framework including a quantized resilient distributed observer layer and a decentralized quantized adaptive fractional-order controller layer is proposed for solving the considered control problem. Specifically, quantized resilient distributed observers are designed at the observer layer for each agent to guarantee the availability of observing the reference system under the influence of data-rate-constrained communication and DoS attacks. Based on the designed observers, smooth reference trajectories with the existence of high-order derivatives, which ensure the applicability of the backstepping technique, are then constructed at the decentralized controller layer, where a novel adaptive fractional-order prescribed performance-based backstepping quantized control strategy is proposed for high-order integer uncertain systems, resulting in an enhanced control scheme with the integration of fractional calculus. It is theoretically proven that under data-rate constraints and DoS attacks, the output tracking error of each agent in relation to the reference signal will constantly stay strictly within the predefined performance limit under the proposed control scheme, with all closed-loop signals remaining bounded. Simulation studies are provided as evidence to establish the efficacy of the proposed distributed quantized fractional adaptive prescribed performance-based control strategy.