Dual‐Terminal Dynamic Event‐Triggering Leader‐Following and Leaderless Consensus for Multi‐Agent Systems Under Distributed DoS Attack

Abstract

In this article, the secure consensus problem for networked multi‐agent systems (MASs) under distributed denial of service (DoS) attacks is investigated. Unlike most existing approaches, which consider DoS attacks launched simultaneously or periodically across communication channels, we propose a more general and severe attack model, where distributed DoS attackers independently target different communication channels within the system. By introducing a DoS‐resilient distributed control protocol incorporating dual‐terminal dynamic event‐triggered mechanisms (DETMs), we rigorously prove that leader‐following connected MASs can achieve asymptotically stable consensus under distributed DoS attacks. More interestingly, the DETMs are implemented on each agent's controller‐to‐actuator and inter‐agent communication channels, reducing both communication and control update frequencies, which helps conserve control energy and communication resources. It is also proven that the proposed protocol effectively excludes Zeno behavior. Additionally, we extend our results to the leaderless case and guarantee secure average consensus. Numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the efficacy and superiority of the developed protocols.