An event-triggered sliding mode control mechanism to exponential consensus of fractional-order descriptor nonlinear multi-agent systems

The problem of leader-following exponential consensus is addressed for fractional-order descriptor nonlinear multi-agent systems by designing an event-triggered sliding mode control strategy. Such an exponential consensus is achieved by defining a suitable sliding surface and a controller under the Mittag–Leffler stability of fractional-order systems. Due to the memory nature of the fractional-order calculus operator, a new condition is established to avoid Zeno behaviors happening, which is different from existing event-triggered schemes. Finally, to illustrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method, two examples are provided.