Resilient Estimation, Control, Optimization, and Their Applications in Positive Networked Systems

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, estimation and cooperative control for networked systems have obtained increasing interest due to their wide employment in distributed sensor networks, electric power networks, unmanned mobile swarms, and intelligent vehicle formation. Among these practical networks, there exists a specific kind of networked system with non-negative state variables. Take the susceptible-infected-susceptible model for example, which is usually used to describe networked epidemic processes. Since variables such as the infection rate and the recovery rate are naturally non-negative in the infectious disease model, the positive network model can be used to describe the dynamic characteristics of the infectious disease network. Positive networked systems also have extensive applications in the modeling of compartmental networks, logical networks, traffic flow control, and gene regulatory networks.

Due to the large scale of networks, it is very important to estimate the state of nodes in the network effectively. Distributed state estimation is widely used in a networked system to estimate the state information of the tracking targets in real-time via the communication topology. The distributed nature of the network can effectively reduce communication costs and the probability of failure, thereby greatly improving system efficiency and robustness. On the other hand, networked systems are particularly vulnerable to external attacks. Various kinds of attacks could jeopardize the security, robustness, resiliency, safety, and information integrity of the networks, including replay attacks, denial-of-service attacks, false-data injection attacks, camouflage attacks, and actuation attacks. To resist the above attacks against distributed systems, two methodologies have been proposed, that is, diagnosis-based defense and attack-resilient defense. Diagnosis-based defense is more conventional, which detects, identifies, and removes (or recovers) the compromised nodes and/or edges on the topology of networks. In contrast, attack-resilient defense does not need a diagnosis process while maintaining an acceptable system performance against malicious attacks, which has been studied extensively in recent years.

Though results about resilient estimation, control, and optimization have been reported successively, little attention has been attracted to positive networked systems. For example, the resilient estimation and control of networked epidemic processes are very sensitive to unintentional or malicious intruders from outside regions, which have been widely reported in the media. Moreover, network optimization, such as the optimal allocation of resources at each node, is also worthy of further discussion and analysis.

The primary goal of this Special Issue is to disseminate the latest findings, new research developments, and future trends and innovations in the estimation, control, and optimization of positive systems, positive networked systems, and their applications in electric circuits. Both theoretical and experimental studies are encouraged. Moreover, high-quality reviews and survey papers are welcomed.

The submitted papers may focus on, but not necessarily be limited to, the following areas:

• Robust, adaptive, and intelligent estimation of positive networked systems;
• Safety-critical control of positive networked systems subject to various constraints;
• Resilient and network-based estimation and control of positive networked systems subject to various network attacks;
• Prescribed-time and finite-time control of positive networked systems;
• Distributed control and optimization of positive networked systems;
• Distributed Nash equilibrium of games between positive networked systems;
• Fault detection filtering and fault tolerant control of positive networked systems;
• Applications in electric circuits such as energy-efficient resource allocation, network capacity optimization, maximization of network sum rate, and so on.

Dr. Yukang Cui
Prof. Dr. James Lam
Dr. Lanlan Su
Dr. Xin Gong
Dr. Ahmadreza Jenabzadeh
Guest Editors

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• positive networked systems
• multi-agent systems
• resilient control and distributed optimization
• robust control and filtering
• stability of dynamic systems
• networked control systems
• positive systems
• genetic regulatory networks
• vibration control