Consensus of fractional-order multi-agent systems with linear models via observer-type protocol

In this paper, the consensus of fractional-order multi-agent systems with general linear models is investigated, where the fractional-order a satisfies 0 < alpha <= n for any given natural number n. A distributed observer-type protocol is proposed. By applying the fractional-order stability theory, properties of the Kronecker product, Mittag-Leffier function and Laplace transform, a sufficient condition is obtained under the assumption that each agent is stabilizable and detectable. Finally, a numerical simulation is presented to illustrate the usefulness of the theoretical result, which shows that the result obtained in this paper generalizes and improves some existing results in literature.