2017 IEEE 56th Annual Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)
December 12-15, 2017, Melbourne, Australia
Distributed Control for Synchronization on the Circle
Byung-Hun Lee and Hyo-Sung Ahn
Abstract— In this paper, the novel consensus protocol on the
unit circle is proposed. The consensus problem on the unit circle
refers to the synchronization of coupled oscillators. We consider
the states of the agents on the unit circle as the position vector
in the vector space. We add an auxiliary variable which is
assumed to be communicated by agents. By using the auxiliary
variables, we design the control law defined in the vector space
for the synchronization. From the convex nature of the vector
space, we guarantee the convergence of the auxiliary variables
under the proposed consensus protocol for almost all initial
conditions. With the proposed control input, the dynamics of
agents on the circle achieves the synchronization exponentially.
By the projection of the proposed algorithm onto the circle, it
is not necessary to analyze the dynamics of the agent directly
on the circle. Instead, the global convergence property of the
agent is analyzed in the vector space.
Index Terms— Multi-agent systems, Distributed control, Syn-
chronization, Consensus, Networked systems.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A cooperative control for a network of systems interacting
via local coupling has attracted researcher’s interest during
the last decades. The consensus algorithm is one of the most
actively studied topics in the networked multi-agent systems.
In the consensus problem, the distributed strategies achieve
the convergence of states to a common value.
We consider a consensus algorithm on the circle. Technical
application of this problem is the synchronization of coupled
oscillators. While the global convergence property of the
classical consensus algorithm is analyzed in vector space, the
analysis of it on the circle is quite intractable and at least
very dependent on the communication graph [1]. Under the
assumption of that the graph is fixed and undirected, Sarlette
and Sepulchre proposed the sinusoidal coupling model which
is derived from the gradient of the modified potential func-
tion [2]. The modified potential function is designed such that
the only stable equilibrium corresponds to synchronization.
The graph information including the number of nodes is
required to construct this potential. In the result of [3], the
Gossip algorithm is proposed for the global synchronization
on the circle. At each time instant, a given agent selects
randomly one (or none) of its neighbors. The update is
then taken as if this neighbor was the one, disregarding the
information from others. The expected synchronization in
the Gossip algorithm can be shown to be independent of
the initial condition but it is not easy to characterize which
graph property favors faster convergence. In [4], the novel
dynamics for the synchronization is proposed in the networks
The authors are with School of Mechanical Engineering, Gwangju Insti-
tute of Science and Technology, Gwangju, Korea. E-mail: bhlee@gist.ac.kr;
hyosung@gist.ac.kr.
978-1-5090-2873-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
of coupled oscillators. In the paper, auxiliary variables which
are communicated by agents are introduced for recovering
the synchronization properties of vector spaces for almost
all initial conditions. The proposed dynamic consensus al-
gorithm exploits the embedding of the algorithm in a linear
space. Under the assumption of that the position of agents on
the circle is allowed, the algorithm computes an update in the
embedding space and projects the result onto the manifold
[4].
While there are some solutions to recover almost global
convergence on the unit circle, the existence of generalized
dynamics is sill questioned in the case of that the information
via local coupling is only available as the measurements.
We may answer the question in this paper. The position of
agent on the unit circle can be considered as the position
vector in the vector space. We consider the dynamics of
the position of agents in vector space instead of the unit
circle. Under the assumption of that the information can be
exchanged by agents, we add the auxiliary variables defined
in the vector space. The objective of the auxiliary variables
is to design a feedback controller from the estimated value.
From the convexity of vector space, global convergence
property of the auxiliary variable can be analyzed under
the proposed consensus dynamics. The use of the auxiliary
variable is initially motivated by the result of [4]. The
assumption of the global information as the measurement in
[4] is relaxed to an assumption of local information obtained
from the interaction with neighbors; while Scardovi et al. [4]
exploits the position information of each agent to design the
consensus protocol on the circle, the proposed method in this
work uses the relative information based on local interactions
between neighboring agents. In our previous works [5]–
[7], we showed that auxiliary variables estimate the position
of agents on the circle under the proposed estimation law.
Here, we desire to design the consensus protocol based on
the estimated value. By embedding the proposed consensus
protocol to the unit circle, we project the position of agents
in vector space onto the circle. It implies that the dynamics
of the agents on the circle is the tangent mapping of the
proposed consensus protocol at the position of the agents.
Therefore, we do not have to analyze the dynamics of the
agent directly on the circle. Instead, the global convergence
property of the agents is analyzed in the vector space.
The outline of this paper is summarized as follows. In
Section II, preliminaries are described. In Section III, an idea
for the consensus protocol is described and the stability of
the consensus protocol is analyzed. Simulation results are
provided in Section IV. Concluding remarks are given in
Section V.
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 II. P RELIMINARY
In this paper, we use the following notation. Let S 1 denote
the unit circle(i.e. S 1 denotes the set of angles in polar
coordinate system with the radius of one). Given N column
vectors x1 , x2 . . . xN ∈ Rn , x denotes the stacking of the
vectors, i.e. x = (x1 , x2 , . . . , xN ). The matrix In denotes the
n-dimensional identity matrix. Given two matrices A and B,
A ⊗ B denotes the Kronecker product of the matrices. We
√ n-dimensions is invariant under the consensus algorithm of
have i = −1.
A. Laplacian Matrix and Consensus Property
Given a set of interconnected systems, the interaction
topology can be modeled by a directed weighted graph
G = (V, E, A), where V and E denote the set of vertices and
edges, respectively, and A is a weighted adjacency matrix
with nonnegative elements akl which is assigned to the
pair (k, l) ∈ E. Nk denotes neighbors of k. The Laplacian
matrix L = [lkj ] associated to G = (V, E, A) is defined as
lkj = j∈Nk akj if k = j and lkj = −akj otherwise. If
there is at least one node having directed paths to all other
nodes, G is said to have a rooted-out branch. In the following,
we only consider the graph G with a rooted-out branch. The
following result is borrowed from [8], [9] .
Theorem 2.1: Every eigenvalue of L has strictly positive
real part except for a simple zero eigenvalue with the
corresponding eigenvector [1, 1, . . . 1]T , if and only if the
associated digraph has a rooted-out branch.
Let us consider N -agents whose interaction graph is
given by G = (V, E, A). A classical consensus protocol in
continuous-time is as follows [10]:

ẋk (t) = akj (xj (t) − xk (t)), ∀k ∈ V (1)
j∈Nk
where xi ∈ Rn . Using the Laplacian matrix, (1) can be
equivalently expressed as
ẋ(t) = −(L ⊗ In )x(t) (2)
The following result is a typical one.
Theorem 2.2 (Theorem 2.1 in [11]): The equilibrium set
Ex = {x ∈ RnN : xk = xj , ∀k, j ∈ V} of (2) is globally
exponentially stable if and only if G has a rooted-out branch.
Moreover, the state x(t) converges to a finite point in Ex .
B. Consensus in S 1
The consensus protocol (1) is interpreted as the distributed
method based on the relative quantities of states i.e(xj −
xk ), j ∈ Nk . Suppose that there are N agents on the unit
circle whose interaction graph is given by G = (V, E, A).
The state of each agent is denoted by θk ∈ S 1 . Let us denote
the geodesic distance1 between θj and θi as θji which is
1 Geodesic distance refers to the shortest path of two points in curved
space. While the straight line between two points is unique and identical to
the shortest path in vector space, the straight line between two points in S 1
is not unique. In other words, there are always two paths from one point
to another point on the unit circle. Therefore, the difference of two points
does not guarantee the shortest path among them. For instance, suppose
that θj = 23 π and θk = − 23 π. Then, the geodesic distance of two points
is θjk = − 23 π, although the difference of two points is equivalent to
θj − θk = 43 π.
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defined by θji := PV(θj − θi ), where PV(θj − θi ) = [(θj −
θi + π)mod 2π] − π. Note that θjk = θj − θk in general. The
consensus protocol based on the relative quantities in S 1 is
as follows [11], [12]:

θ̇k = akj θjk , i ∈ V (3)
j∈Nk
In Euclidean space, the convex hull of a set of points in
(1). The permanent contraction of this convex hull allows
to conclude that the agents end up at a consensus value(
[1], [13]). In S 1 , the convergence property of the consen-
sus algorithm based on the relative quantities of states is
analyzed in similar way, while the convergence of states to
the consensus value is not possible for all initial values of
states. In other words, there is a subset such that convex hull
of the set of points is invariant. Then, a sufficient condition
for the permanent contraction of a convex hull is stated in
the following theorem.
Theorem 2.3 (Theorem 5.2 in [14]): Consider the cou-
pled oscillator model (3) with a connected graph G(V, E, A).
Suppose that a convex hull of all initial values is within
an open semi circle. Then, this convex hull is positively
invariant, and each trajectory originating in the convex hull
achieves an exponential synchronization.
The fundamental difference between the consensus proto-
col (1) in vector space and another protocol (3) in S 1 is the
non-convex2 nature of configuration spaces like the circle or
sphere. For this reason, a global convergence analysis of the
consensus algorithm in the space is quite intractable and at
least very dependent on the communication graph [1].
In this paper, we embed θk ∈ S 1 in vector space. Then,
we estimate the embedding of θk by using auxiliary variables
defined on the Euclidean space. The estimated value is used
to design a feedback controller for θk . Although consensus
algorithm plays still important role in the proposed method,
unlike the consensus protocol (3), the proposed method
achieves global convergence of the estimated variables. This
is described in the next section.
C. Problem Statement
Consider N agents on the unit circle which are modeled
by
θ̇k = ωk , k ∈ V. (4)
We assume that the geodesic distance of neighbors denoted
by θjk , j ∈ Nk is measured by k. The objective of the
control is then stated as follows:
Problem 2.1: Suppose that N agents whose interaction
graph G = (V, E, A) has a rooted-out branch are modeled by
(4). Design a control law ωk such that θk → θ∗ as t → ∞ for
θ∗ ∈ S 1 and k ∈ V based on the measurements θjk , j ∈ Nk .
2 Non-convexity is the opposite of convexity. Convexity property implies
that the future, updated value of any agent in the network is a convex
combination of its current value as well as the current values of its neighbors.
It is thus clear that max{x1 , x2 , . . . , xN } is a non-increasing function of
time( [15]).
 A rotation matrix R ∈ SO(2)3 is diffeomorphic with the where 02 ∈ R2×2 is a matrix having only zero entries. Now,
circle group. Using the rotation angle θ as a parameter, the we study the stability of the system (7). With a time-varying
rotation matrix can be parametrized as follows: nonsingular matrix Dr (t) ∈ R2N , similarity transformation
  can be achieved as follows: Hs (t) = Dr (t)−1 H(t)Dr (t).
cos(θ) − sin(θ)
R= (5) Suppose that Dr (t) is a block diagonal matrix defined by
sin(θ) cos(θ)
Dr (t) := diag(R1 (t), R2 (t), . . . , RN (t)) ∈ SO(2N ). Then,
We note that Rk ∈ SO(2) corresponds to θk ∈ S 1 . Then, the Hs is written as follows: Hs (t) = Dr (t)T H(t)Dr (t) =
geodesic distance θjk ∈ S 1 corresponds to Rjk = Rj RkT . −LH ⊗ I2 , where LH ∈ RN ×N is the Laplacian matrix
III. N OVEL M ETHOD FOR S YNCHRONIZATION corresponding to the graph G(V, E). Let us consider the co-
ordinate transformation as ẑ = Dr (t)q̂. From the definition
Let us embed θk ∈ S 1 into two dimensional vector
of Dr (t), the derivative of Dr (t) is Ḋr (t) = Dω Dr (t). Then,
space. By using Euler’s formula, the exponential map of θk
the dynamics of ẑ can be written in terms of q̂ as follows:
represents a complex number. The complex number naturally
can be represented in the two dimensional vector space. q̂˙ = −(LH ⊗ I2 )q̂ (10)
Then, we can define unknown variable zk ∈ R2 which is
From the Theorem 2.2, it is clear that q̂ converges to
corresponding to θk ∈ S 1 , ∀k ∈ V. Now, we consider the
the equilibrium set which is indicated as Ex = {x =
dynamics of zk instead of the dynamics of θk . It is natural
(x1 , x2 , . . . xN ) ∈ R2N : x1 = x2 = · · · = xN }. Let us
that the motion of zk is confined to the unit length circle
consider the case of that q̂ converges to the origin. It implies
due to the relationship of zk and θk . The angular velocity of
that the exact inference of estimated value is intractable,
the agent is denoted by ωk in (4). Then, we can design the
since ẑ converges to the origin; when an estimated orientation
dynamics of zk as follows:
  is calculated by the mapping of ẑk to S 1 , the origin of vector
0 −ωk ẑk is not desirable since it can not be transformed to the
żk = zk = Ωk zk (6)
ωk 0 angle position on S 1 . For this reason, the convergence of q̂
Since dt d
zk 22 = 2zkT Ωk zk = 0, zk 2 is always equiv- to the origin poses the undesired situation. Then, we have
alent to one. We add an auxiliary variable denoted by ẑk the desired equilibrium set defined by Eq := Ex \ {0}. For
whose objective is to estimate the variable zk and design a a square matrix A, define the column space of matrix A as
feedback controller for synchronization. Auxiliary variables C(A). Then, we have the relations of C(A) = null(AT )⊥ ,
are assumed to be communicated by each agent based on where null(AT )⊥ denotes the orthogonal space of null space
the interaction graph. Note that sensing and communication of AT . Based on the consensus property mentioned in the
graph have opposite directions. When an agent i senses the previous section, the following lemma provides conditions
geodesic distance θji , an agent j transmits the auxiliary for the convergence of q̂ to Eq .
variable of j to the agent i. We design the dynamics of ẑk Lemma 3.1: Suppose that G has a rooted-out branch. For
as follows: the dynamics (10), there exists a finite point q∞ ∈ Eq such
   that q̂ exponentially converges if and only if an initial value
ẑ˙k = Ωk ẑk + akj Rjk (t)T ẑj − ẑk , (7) q̂(t0 ) is not in C(LH ⊗ In ).
j∈Nk Proof: From the Theorem 2.2, q̂ globally exponentially
where akj > 0. Let ẑ and z be stacked vector forms converges to Ex . Then there exists a finite point q∞ ∈ Ex
defined by ẑ := (ẑ1 , ẑ2 , . . . ẑN ) and z := (z1 , z2 , . . . , zN ) and constants λq , ηq > 0 such that
respectively. Here, (6)-(7) can be written in terms of ẑ and q̂(t) − q∞ ≤ ηq e−λq (t−t0 ) q̂(t0 ) − q∞ . (11)
z as follows:
ẑ˙ = Dω ẑ + H(t)ẑ Now, we consider a steady state solution q∞ . A solution
ż = Dω z
(8) of q̂ is written as follows: q̂(t) = e−LH ⊗I2 (t−t0 ) q̂(t0 ). The
Jordan form of LH is obtained by the similarity transfor-
where H(t) ∈ R2N ×2N and Dω are block matrices defined mation as follows: G−1 LH G = J. Let G and G−1 be
as represented as G = [g1 · · · gN ] and G−1 = [w1T · · · wN T T
]
⎡ ⎤
H11 (t) · · · H1N (t) respectively. We supposed that g1 and w1 are the right and
⎢ .. .. .. ⎥ left eigenvector of the zero eigenvalue respectively. Since
H(t) := ⎣ . . . ⎦
every nonzero eigenvalue of LH has negative real part, a
HN 1 (t) · · · HN N (t) steady state solution of q̂ is as follows: limt→∞ q̂(t) =
and Dω := diag(Ω1 , Ω2 , . . . , ΩN ) respectively. Each parti- (g1 ⊗ I2 )(w1 ⊗ In )q̂(t0 ). This implies that q̂(t) converges
tion Hkj (t) ∈ R2×2 is written as follows: to zero if and only if q̂(t0 ) is perpendicular to the w1 ⊗ I2
⎧ which is the left eigenvector of the zero eigenvalue. Then, it
⎨ a kj Rjk (t)
T
, j ∈ Nk
follows that (w1 ⊗ I2 )q̂(t0 ) = 0, if and only if q̂(t0 ) is in
Hkj (t) := − j∈Nk akj I2 , k = j (9)
⎩ null(LTH ⊗ I2 )⊥ . Since null(LTH ⊗ I2 )⊥ = C(LH ⊗ I2 ), it
02 ,j ∈/ Nk
completes the proof.
3 The n-dimensional special orthogonal group is defined by SO(n) := Remark 3.1: The dimension of C(LH ) is n − 1. Then,
{Q ∈ Rn×n : QT Q = QQT = In , det(Q) = 1}. Lebesgue measure of C(LH ) is equivalent to zero. This

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implies that, under the dynamics (10), the convergence of
q̂ to Eq is possible for almost every initial value of q̂(t0 ). It
may be said that the proposed approach guarantees almost
global convergence.
The result of Lemma 3.1 implies that ẑk converges to
Rk (t)q ∞ regardless of the value of ωk . Therefore, the
dynamics (8) is said to estimate a commonly biased value
of θk , k ∈ V. Let us consider the mapping of ẑk to S 1 . A
smooth map ϕ : M → S 1 is given by ϕ(x) = ∠x, where
M ⊆ R2 \ {0}. The operation ∠ implies an angle of the
vector x from a reference direction. Then, the differential of
ϕ at x ∈ M is a linear map as follows : dϕx : Tx (M ) →
Fig. 1: Projection of vector field g(x) onto the unit circle
Tϕ(x) (S 1 ). where Tx (M ) is a tangent space of manifold M
is shown. Tangent mapping dϕx (g(x)) is defined in the
at x ∈ M . We can denote ϕ(ẑk ) as θ̂k . The derivative of θ̂k
algebraic expression dϕx (g(x)) = g(x)T r/ x . The term
is as follows:
⎛ ⎞ R π2 denotes a rotation matrix of the angle π2 .
˙   
θ̂k = dϕẑk (Ωk ẑk ) + dϕẑk ⎝ Rjk (t)T ẑj − ẑk ⎠
j∈Nk is defined as follows:
  
fk := g(x)T r
dϕx (g(x)) := x ,
= ωk + f k . (12) x
where r is a rotated vector of x by π2 (i.e. r := R π2 x
x
).
In similar way, dynamics of θk is derived as follows: Note that the term R 2 denotes a rotation matrix of the angle
π
π
2 . In this way, fk in (12) can be written as follows :
θ̇k = dϕzk (Ωk zk ) = ωk . (13)   T
j∈Nk Rjk (t) ẑj − ẑk R π2 ẑẑkk2
T
fk =
Now, we propose a control input ωk as follows:  
  T ẑk
ωk = − sin(θ̂k ). (14) = j∈Nk Rjk (t) ẑj − ẑk R 2
T π
ẑk 2
  
Let us define Θ̂ and Θ as Θ̂ := (θ̂1 , θ̂2 , . . . , θ̂N ) and Θ := fjk :=
(θ1 , θ2 , . . . , θN ) respectively. We can rewrite the dynamics The term ẑkT R π2 ẑk is identical to zero regardless of the value
(12) - (13) in terms of Θ̂ and Θ as follows : of ẑk ∈ R2 , since R π2 ∈ SO(2) is a skew symmetric matrix.
˙ Then, fjk is written as follows:
Θ̂ = Ω + f (15)
Θ̇ = Ω, fjk = ẑjT Rjk (t)R π2 ẑẑkk2 = cjk cos(θ̂j − θ̂k − θjk − π2 )
where Ω := (ω1 , ω2 , . . . , ωN ) and f := (f1 , f2 , . . . , fN ). = cjk sin(θ̂j − θ̂k − θjk ),
Note that the terms Ω and f are the tangent mapping of Dω where cjk > 0. This is derived from the fact that aT b =
and H(t)ẑ in (8) to S 1 respectively. In general, the angle a b cos(∠a − ∠b), where a and b are n-dimensional
position satisfies θ = θ ± 2π. Without loss of generality, vectors. Now, we back to the proof of Lemma 3.2. The
the domain of angle position is considered as P := [0, 2π). system of each agent is written as follows:
Equilibrium points of the dynamics (15) are defined as 
˙
follows: θ̂k = − sin(θ̂k ) + j∈Nk cjk sin(θ̂j − θ̂k − θjk )
(16)
Su = {θ̂k , θk ∈ P, ∀k ∈ V : θ̂k = π, θk = θ∗ , θ∗ ∈ S 1 } θ̇k = − sin(θ̂k ), ∀k ∈ V.
Sd = {θ̂k , θk ∈ P, ∀k ∈ V : θ̂k = 0, θk = θ∗ , θ∗ ∈ S 1 } The stability behavior of the equilibrium point can be char-
acterized via the linearization of nonlinear system. Suppose
We study the stability behavior of the equilibrium point in that θ̂j = π and θj = θ∗ for all j ∈ V \ k. The Jacobian
the following lemma. matrix of the system (16) is derived as follows :
Lemma 3.2: Under the dynamics of (15), the equilibrium  
point in Su is unstable. − cos(θ̂k ) − αk αk 
A =
Proof: Before we prove the stability behavior of equi- − cos(θ̂k ) 0 θ̂ =π,θ =θ∗
librium point, let us study details of tangent mapping from    k
k
1 − j∈Nk cjk c
j∈Nk jk
M to S 1 . The position in M and its smooth mapping from M =
1 0
to S 1 are denoted by x and θ = ϕ(x) respectively. Suppose 
that a vector field of x in M is represented as ẋ = g(x). where αk = j∈Nk cjk cos(  θ̂j −θ̂k −θjk ). We see that eigen-
The tangent mapping from M to S 1 can be considered as values of A are 1 and − j∈Nk cjk . Since one of eigenvalue
a projection of vector field onto the unit circle in vector is strictly positive, it leads to say that the equilibrium point
space(see Fig. 1). The tangent mapping of g(x) ∈ M to S 1 in Su is unstable. It completes the proof.

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Now, we consider solutions of θ̂k (t) and θk (t). From the
dynamics (15) with the control law (14), There exists the
steady state solution of θk (t) when θ̂k = 0 or θ̂k = π.
We obtain the following result that the equilibrium set Sd is
exponentially stable.
Theorem 3.1: Suppose that G has a rooted-out branch.
Under the dynamics (15) with the control input (14), there
exist some finite values , kθ , λθ , T1 , T2 > 0 such that the
solution θ̂k (t) satisfies
Fig. 2: Sensing topology of ten agents on unit circle for
|θ̂k (t)| ≤ kθ e−λθ (t−t0 −T1 ) |θ̂k (t0 + T1 )|, (17) simulation
∀t0 + T1 ≤ t < t0 + T1 + T2
and
and
|θ̂k (t)| ≤ , ∀t ≥ t0 + T1 + T2 . (18)  β(f ,T1 )
Vk (2 − Vk ) ≤ φ , ∀t ≥ t0 + T1 + T2 (22)
Furthermore, converges to zero as T1 goes to ∞.
Proof: From the result of Lemma 3.1, we see that ẑ → By the comparison lemma, the solution Vk (t) in (21) satisfies
Dr (t)q∞ as t → ∞. Note that H(t)Dr (t)q∞ = 0 from the 2
definitions. From (11), the term H(t)ẑ in (8) satisfies the Vk (t) ≤ t
2(1−φ)dξ
following inequality: 1 + Ce T1 +t0
∀t0 + T1 ≤ t < t0 + T1 + T2 where C ∈ R is a constant. It
H(t)ẑ = H(t)Dr (t)q̂(t) − H(t)Dr (t)q∞ follows that Vk (t) converges to zero in exponential rate for
≤ supt0 ≤τ ≤t H(τ ) q̂(t) − q∞ the interval. There exists a value γ such that
≤ H̄ηq e−λq (t−t0 ) q̂(t0 ) − q∞
γ|θ̂k |2 ≤ Vk , θ̂k ∈ [−π, π] (23)
where H̄ := limt→∞ supt0 ≤τ ≤t H(τ ) < ∞4 . This
implies that H(t)ẑ has the upper bound and H(t)ẑ → 0 Then, the solution θ̂k satisfies (17) for t0 + T1 ≤ t < t0 +
as t → ∞. Since the term f in (15) corresponds to the T1 + T2 . From (22), the range of Vk for t ≥ t0 + T1 + T2 is
term H(t)ẑ in (8), we can infer that there exist finite values as follows :

kf , λk > 0 such that 2
0 ≤ Vk ≤ 1 − 1 − β (fφ2,T1 ) ,

f (t) ≤ kf e−λf (t−t0 ) f (t0 ) := β( f , t − t0 ), (19) 2
1 + 1 − β (fφ2,T1 ) ≤ Vk ≤ 2
where β( f , t − t0 ) belongs to the class KL function. Now,
we consider a Lyapunov candidate function Vk of θ̂k . Let us Since θ̂k = π is the unstable equilibrium point from the
define Vk : S 1 → [0, 2] as Vk = 1 − cos(θ̂k ). From (19), the result of Lemma
 3.2, the only possible range of Vk is 0 ≤
derivative of Vk satisfies Vk ≤ 1 − 1 − β 2 ( f , T1 )/φ2 for t ≥ t0 + T1 + T2 . From
(23), the solution of θ̂k satisfies
˙
V̇k = θ̂k sin(θ̂k ) = − sin2 (θ̂k ) + fk sin(θ̂k ) √
1− 1−β 2 (f ,T1 )/φ2
≤ − sin2 (θ̂k ) + β( f , t − t0 )| sin(θ̂k )| |θ̂k | ≤ γ :=
= −Vk (2 − Vk )
 ∀t ≥ t0 + T1 + T2 . From the definition of β( f , T1 ), → 0
+β( f , t − t0 ) Vk (2 − Vk ), (20) as T1 → ∞. It completes the proof.
where | sin(θ̂ We consider the asymptotic state of θk . The estimated value
k )| can be written in terms of Vk as follows :
| sin(θ̂k )| = Vk (2 − Vk ). There exists a value 0 < φ < 1 of θk is written as follows :θ̂k = ∠ẑk = ∠Rk qk = θk + ∠qk .
such that From the results of Lemma 3.1 and Theorem 3.1, it follows
that limt→∞ θ̂k (t) = limt→∞ θk (t) + ∠q ∞ = 0. It implies
V̇k ≤ −(1 − φ)Vk (2 − Vk ) − φVk (2 − Vk ) that θk asymptotically converges to a common angle position

+β( f , t − t0 ) Vk (2 − Vk ) under the dynamics (15). Furthermore, since the value of q ∞
is dependent on the initial values of auxiliary variables, the
≤ −(1 − φ)Vk (2 − Vk ), (21)
asymptotic state of θk is also determined by the initial values
∀t0 + T1 ≤ t < t0 + T1 + T2 for some finite T1 , T2 > 0. It of auxiliary variables.
follows that
 IV. S IMULATION
Vk (2 − Vk ) > β(fφ,T1 ) , We provide simulation results to verify the proposed
∀t0 + T1 ≤ t < t0 + T1 + T2 , strategy. We consider ten agents whose interaction graph G
4 Matrix norm of H(t) is induced by the vector norm as follows :
is shown in Fig. 2. The initial values of θk , ∀k ∈ V are
H(t) = supx=1 H(t)x. From the definition of H in (9), the matrix randomly assigned. Under the proposed strategy, values of
norm of H is always bounded by a finite value. θk converge to a common value as illustrated in Fig. 3. Note

4173

Fig. 3: Synchronization of ten agents on the unit circle.
2
1.5
Rjk − I2 2
1 (L. Dubbeldam, Green, ed.), Wiley & Sons, 2011.
0.5
0
0 5 10 15
time
Fig. 4: Induced norm of Rjk − I2 for all (j, k) ∈ E. Rjk ∈
SO(2) identifies the relative quantity of the state θjk ∈ S 1
that θk = θk ±2π ∈ S 1 ; the range of 2π implies a same value
in the angle. The relative quantities of states θjk ∈ S 1 can
be represented in terms of Rjk ∈ SO(2) for all (j, k) ∈ E.
Since the value of θjk is a rotation angle of Rjk , the rotation
matrix Rjk converges to I2 as θjk converges to zero. This
is illustrated in Fig.4. In the figure, we see that the value of
relative orientation θjk converges to zero for all (j, k) ∈ E.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we have proposed a novel method for
synchronization by using only relative quantities of states
in S 1 . By embedding the states of agents from the unit
circle to the Euclidean space, we can consider the behavior
of the dynamic system in the vector space instead of the
unit circle. We also added virtual auxiliary variables for
each agent which are defined on the vector space. Under the
proposed consensus protocol, the auxiliary variables estimate
the embedding of the states of agents regardless of the
value of control input. The global convergence property of
auxiliary variables can be analyzed by using the convexity
of the configuration space. With the proposed control input,
we show that the synchronization on the unit circle is ex-
ponentially achieved. Furthermore, the steady state solution
of the proposed dynamics is dependent on the initial values
of auxiliary variables. Since the convergence of auxiliary
4174
variables to the desired equilibrium point is guaranteed for
almost all initial conditions, it is said that the proposed con-
sensus protocol guarantees almost global synchronization.
From the result of our works, we show that the problem
originated from the non-convexity of the configuration space
can be solved by embedding the dynamics on the circle into
the higher dimensional vector space. In the future works,
the result can be extended to the unit sphere in the higher
dimensional space. We can also consider coordination of
angular velocity as well as the phase synchronization in
coupled oscillators.
VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by GIST Research Institute
(GRI) and by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of
Korea under the grant NRF-2017R1A2B3007034.
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