A necessary and sufficient condition for discrete-time consensus on star boundaries

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sidorenko, Galina, Thunberg, Johan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Sidorenko, Galina
Thunberg, Johan
author_facet Sidorenko, Galina
Thunberg, Johan
contents It is intuitive and well known, that if agents in a multi-agent system iteratively update their states in the Euclidean space as convex combinations of neighbors' states, all states eventually converge to the same value (consensus), provided the interaction graph is sufficiently connected. However, this seems to be also true in practice if the convex combinations of states are mapped or radially projected onto any unit $l_p$-sphere or even boundaries of star-convex sets, herein referred to as star boundaries. In this paper, we present insight into this matter by providing a necessary and sufficient condition for asymptotic consensus of the normalized states (directions) for strongly connected directed graphs, which is equivalent to asymptotic consensus of states when the star boundaries are the same for all agents. Furthermore, we show that when asymptotic consensus occurs, the states converge linearly and the point of convergence is continuous in the initial states. Assuming a directed strongly connected graph provides a more general setting than that considered, for example, in gradient-based consensus protocols, where symmetric graphs are assumed. Illustrative examples and a vast number of numerical simulations showcase the theoretical results.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_03508
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A necessary and sufficient condition for discrete-time consensus on star boundaries
Sidorenko, Galina
Thunberg, Johan
Optimization and Control
Systems and Control
It is intuitive and well known, that if agents in a multi-agent system iteratively update their states in the Euclidean space as convex combinations of neighbors' states, all states eventually converge to the same value (consensus), provided the interaction graph is sufficiently connected. However, this seems to be also true in practice if the convex combinations of states are mapped or radially projected onto any unit $l_p$-sphere or even boundaries of star-convex sets, herein referred to as star boundaries. In this paper, we present insight into this matter by providing a necessary and sufficient condition for asymptotic consensus of the normalized states (directions) for strongly connected directed graphs, which is equivalent to asymptotic consensus of states when the star boundaries are the same for all agents. Furthermore, we show that when asymptotic consensus occurs, the states converge linearly and the point of convergence is continuous in the initial states. Assuming a directed strongly connected graph provides a more general setting than that considered, for example, in gradient-based consensus protocols, where symmetric graphs are assumed. Illustrative examples and a vast number of numerical simulations showcase the theoretical results.
title A necessary and sufficient condition for discrete-time consensus on star boundaries
topic Optimization and Control
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03508