Distributed Control of Descriptor Networks: A Convex Procedure for Augmented Sparsity

For networks of systems, with possibly improper transfer function matrices, we present a design framework which enables $\mathcal{H}_\infty$ control, while imposing sparsity constraints on the controller's coprime factors. We propose a convex and iterative optimization procedure with guaranteed convergence to obtain distributed controllers. By exploiting the robustness-oriented nature of our proposed approach, we provide the means to obtain sparse representations of our control laws that may not be directly supported by the network's nominal model.