On the design of scalable networks rejecting first order disturbances

This paper is concerned with the problem of designing distributed control protocols for network systems affected by delays and disturbances consisting of a first-order polynomial component and a residual signal. Specifically, we propose the use of a multiplex architecture to design distributed control protocols to reject polynomial disturbances up to ramps and guarantee a scalability property that prohibits the amplification of residual disturbances. For this architecture, we give a sufficient condition on the control protocols to guarantee scalability and ramps rejection. The effectiveness of the result, which can be used to study networks of nonlinearly coupled nonlinear agents, is illustrated via a robot formation control problem.