Impacts of Dynamic Topology on Networked Control Systems

Dependable communication links are essential to maintain stability and achieve target performance in control systems. Although communication challenges have been widely examined, the concrete effects of dynamic topologies remain insufficiently understood. This study investigates the impact of dynamic topologies on control systems. When links appear or disappear over time, inter-agent exchanges may become intermittent, degrading data delivery and creating uncertainty about whether each controller receives timely information from its neighbors. Building on earlier results that treat selected controller coefficients as random variables with specified probability distributions, we refine that work by analyzing the distributional properties under dynamic topologies. We further corroborate the analysis with simulations across diverse communication conditions, quantifying the impacts of topology changes on control objectives. Simulation results show how dynamic topologies affect the control system.