Average consensus of multi-agent systems with communication time delays and noisy links

In this paper, we consider the average-consensus problem with communication time delays and noisy links. We analyze two different cases of coupling topologies: fixed and switching topologies. By utilizing the stability theory of the stochastic differential equations, we analytically show that the average consensus could be achieved almost surely with the perturbation of noise and the communication time delays even if the time delay is time-varying. The theoretical results show that the multi-agent systems can tolerate relatively large time delays if the noise is weak, and it can tolerate relatively strong noise if the time delays are low. The simulation results show that systems with strong noise intensities yield slow convergence.