This article investigates the differentially private output consensus problem of continuous-time heterogeneous multiagent systems. An algorithm blending estimation, control and privacy is proposed. To prevent privacy leakage, each agent constructs an auxiliary variable regarding to its own initial output, and then adds a nondecaying noise to this variable. To incorporate the network bandwidth limitation, each agent quantifies the noisy auxiliary variable to 1-bit binary-valued data, and transmits this data to its neighbors at some impulse time instants. Based on the received information, each agent builds the recursive projection algorithm to estimate its neighbors' auxiliary variables, and updates its own auxiliary variable. Then, each agent designs its controller by using its own state and auxiliary variable to achieve the mean-square output consensus. To characterize the degree of privacy protection, the differential privacy index of the proposed mechanism is derived. Compared with the existing works, this article only needs 1-bit communication bandwidth, and the control signals are not required to constantly feed back to the original system. From the aspect of quantization and control, the communication resources can be conserved. An example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

Publication:

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TAC.2026.3668109

Author:

Xiaodong Lu

School of Automation and Electrical Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China

Key Laboratory of Knowledge Automation for Industrial Processes, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100083, China

e-mail: luxiaodong@ustb.edu.cn

Yanlong Zhao

State Key Laboratory of Mathematical Sciences, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

e-mail: ylzhao@amss.ac.cn

Ji-Feng Zhang

School of Automation and Electrical Engineering, Zhongyuan University of Technology, Zhengzhou 450007, China

State Key Laboratory of Mathematical Sciences, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

e-mail: jif@iss.ac.cn