3112 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 50, NO.
9, SEPTEMBER 2020
Dynamic Event-Triggered Distributed Coordination
Control and Its Applications: A Survey
of Trends and Techniques
Xiaohua Ge , Member, IEEE, Qing-Long Han , Fellow, IEEE, Lei Ding , Member, IEEE,
Yu-Long Wang , Member, IEEE, and Xian-Ming Zhang , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Distributed coordination control is the current trend
in networked systems and finds prosperous applications across
a variety of fields, such as smart grids and intelligent trans-
portation systems. One fundamental issue in coordinating and
controlling a large group of distributed and networked agents
is the influence of intermittent interagent interactions caused
by constrained communication resources. Event-triggered com-
munication scheduling stands out as a promising enabler to
strike a balance between the desired control performance and
the satisfactory resource efficiency. What distinguishes dynamic
event-triggered scheduling from traditional static event-triggered
scheduling is that the triggering mechanism can be dynam-
ically adjusted over time in accordance with both available
system information and additional dynamic variables. This arti-
cle provides an up-to-date overview of dynamic event-triggered
distributed coordination control. The motivation of dynamic
event-triggered scheduling is first introduced in the context of dis-
tributed coordination control. Then some techniques of dynamic
event-triggered distributed coordination control are discussed
in detail. Implementation and design issues are well addressed.
Furthermore, this article exemplifies two applications of dynamic
event-triggered distributed coordination control in the fields
of microgrids and automated vehicles. Several challenges are
suggested to direct the future research.
Index Terms—Automated vehicles, distributed coordination
control, distributed secondary control, dynamic event-triggered
mechanism, microgrids, platooning, vehicular ad hoc networks
(VANETs).
Manuscript received July 15, 2020; accepted July 17, 2020. Date of cur-
rent version August 18, 2020. This work was supported in part by the
Australian Research Council Discovery Project under Grant DP160103567;
in part by the Program of Jiangsu Specially Appointed Professor under Grant
RK043STP19001; and in part by the Fund of High-Level Talents at NJUPT
under Grant XK0430919039. This article was recommended by Associate
Editor O. Kaynak. (Corresponding authors: Qing-Long Han; Lei Ding.)
Xiaohua Ge, Qing-Long Han, and Xian-Ming Zhang are with the
School of Software and Electrical Engineering, Swinburne University of
Technology, Melbourne, VIC 3122, Australia (e-mail: xge@swin.edu.au;
qhan@swin.edu.au; xianmingzhang@swin.edu.au).
Lei Ding is with the Institute of Advanced Technology, Nanjing
University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210023, China (e-mail:
dl522@163.com).
Yu-Long Wang is with the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Power Station
Automation Technology, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China, and
also with the School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai
University, Shanghai 200444, China (e-mail: yulongwang@shu.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSMC.2020.3010825
2168-2216 
c 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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I. I NTRODUCTION
HE EVER-INCREASING demand for guaranteeing reli-
T able and efficient monitoring, control, and operation of a
variety of distributed networked systems, such as smart grids
and intelligent transportation systems, has stimulated inten-
sive academia and industry interests in developing distributed
coordination control strategies in the setting of multiagent
systems (MASs). An MAS consists prevalently of a large
group of spatially distributed and networked intelligent agents,
each of which represents a strategic entity capable of per-
ceiving and computing scientific data from a physical world
through some sensor and acting upon on a physical component
through some actuator. All the agents can communicate with
each other through some form of communication networks
to achieve coordinated objectives, such as rendezvous, tar-
get enclosing, formation tracking, cooperative defense, and
consensus estimation.
The central aim of coordination control of an MAS is to
develop a desired distributed control protocol or an algorithm
by making use of only local interactions among neighboring
agents such that the coordinated objective of the MAS can be
accomplished in a reliable and efficient fashion. Undoubtedly,
the interagent interactions (or interagent communications),
permitted by some communication network medium, con-
stitute the key ingredient in addressing various distributed
coordination control issues of MASs.
An MAS relies heavily on the communication network
medium to connect spatially distributed agents and to provide
two-way communication for exchanging information (such
as sensor readings and command signals) between agents
because of their spatial dispersal and real-time requirement.
The communication network increases the flexibility, manip-
ulability, and scalability of the entire MAS by enabling more
agents to act autonomously and to access the network medium
simultaneously. However, the introduction of some communi-
cation network medium brings several challenging issues to the
analysis and synthesis of distributed coordination control algo-
rithms for MASs. One fundamental issue is the constrained
communication resources during the design and implemen-
tation of distributed coordination control protocols. This is
because communication networks that have been pervasively
employed in various MASs, such as flying ad hoc network
(FANET), vehicular ad hoc network (VANET), underwater
acoustic communication network, building automation and
GE et al.: DYNAMIC EVENT-TRIGGERED DISTRIBUTED COORDINATION CONTROL AND ITS APPLICATIONS: A SURVEY OF TRENDS AND TECHNIQUES 3113
control network (BACnet), and control area network (CAN)
for dedicated real-time data propagation purposes, or Ethernet
and Internet for general data dissemination purposes, may pos-
sess limited bandwidth and restricted transmission rates. For
example, an IEEE 802.15.4-standard communication proto-
col used in ZigBee systems supports data transmission rates
from 20–250 kb/s within a range up to 20 m, and an IEEE
802.11p-standard dedicated short-range communication proto-
col used in VANET-enabled systems supports data rates from
3–27 Mb/s within a range of up to 1000 m [1]. Thus, this calls
for novel resource-efficient distributed coordination control
approaches which promise both satisfactory communication
efficiency and control performance.
An event-triggered scheduling mechanism (ETSM) has
attracted considerable attention in the control systems soci-
ety over the last decade due to its prominent advantage
in sustaining the desired system performance while keep-
ing the satisfactory communication expenditure for a variety
of networked systems. The rationale behind such an ETSM
is that the decision to perform data samplings/transmissions
or to execute the control tasks is judged by a carefully
designed event-trigger (or triggering mechanism). This is dis-
tinct from a traditional time-triggered scheduling mechanism
(e.g., periodic scheduling) that works at predetermined points
in time. Therefore, communication resources under an ETSM
are only occupied as “needed” or “necessary.” From this
perspective, the ETSM behaves like human intelligence in
such a way as to wisely schedule the samplings/transmissions
over a communication network. Since then, a considerable
amount of research on the ETSM has yet been carried out
for various networked systems, see survey papers [2]–[4] on
single-plant-based networked systems, [5] on distributed sen-
sor networks, and [6]–[9] on MASs. The technical differences
between the existing survey papers [6]–[9] on event-triggered
coordination control and this survey paper are outlined in
Table I.
In recent five years, dynamic event-triggered scheduling has
received intensive interest, see [10]–[13] on single-plant-based
networked systems and [14]–[22] on MASs. What distin-
guishes a dynamic ETSM from a traditional static ETSM
is that an event-trigger therein depends on not only avail-
able system information (e.g., state or output) but also an
auxiliary or additional internal variable of its own dynam-
ics, thereby making the triggering mechanism dynamically
adjusted at different times. Owing to some promising feature
(e.g., non-negativeness) of the introduced auxiliary or internal
dynamic variable, an event-trigger under the dynamic ETSM
can felicitously, in most cases significantly, extend the average
interevent time and thus leads to a further reduction of the con-
sumption of limited communication resources compared to the
static ETSM. However, note that there is a fundamental trade-
off between the desired control system performance and the
satisfactory communication efficiency. It is generally difficult
or impossible to determine a single “best” ETSM that can be
used for all MAS applications. In particular, in the context
of dynamic ETSM-based coordination control, it is imag-
inable that significantly improved communication efficiency
may be associated with increasingly compromised control
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TABLE I
T ECHNICAL D IFFERENCES B ETWEEN D IFFERENT S URVEYS ON
E VENT-T RIGGERED C OORDINATION C ONTROL
performance. Thus, there is a clear need for an up-to-date
analysis of the conditions and limitations of the existing
dynamic ETSMs that successfully achieve the same control
task for an MAS. There is no doubt that the importance of
such analysis and comparisons will become conspicuous as
event-triggered coordination control gains increasing popular-
ity in the field. To the best of our knowledge, at the time
of writing this article, there is a paucity of a detailed survey
of the existing dynamic event-triggered distributed coordina-
tion control solutions that are delicately designed for MASs.
It is therefore the purpose of this article to fill this gap
by providing a timely overview of recent developments in
dynamic event-triggered coordination control. To stimulate
further related theoretical research and practical applications
in this significant and timely subject, two application scenar-
ios, i.e., smart grids and intelligent automated vehicles, are
elaborated.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows.
Section II summarizes the recent progress on dynamic ETSMs
for distributed coordination control. Several fundamental
issues associated with the event-triggered coordination con-
trol implementation and design are discussed. Sections III
and IV are devoted to the specific applications of dynamic
event-triggered coordination control approaches in two typi-
cal fields of smart grids and automated vehicles. Concluding
remarks are drawn in Section V.
II. DYNAMIC E VENT-T RIGGERED D ISTRIBUTED
C OORDINATION C ONTROL
Given a wide variety of ETSMs in MASs, an emphasis is
placed on dynamic ETSMs in the context of distributed coordi-
nation control due to their promising features and benefits that
are unfolded subsequently. First, a general event-triggered dis-
tributed coordination control framework for MASs is provided.
Then, several key issues associated with its implementation
and design are discussed. Finally, recent progress in dynamic
event-triggered distributed coordination control is examined.
3114 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 50, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2020
A. Event-Triggered Scheduling Mechanism
The motivation of event-triggered coordination control has
been well justified in the existing literature (see [7]–[9]). A
general form of an event-based distributed coordination control
protocol is given as
   
Protocol: ui (t) = K N j=1 aij x̃i (t) − x̃j (t)
  (1)
ETSM1 : tk+1i = inf t > tki | G i (ei ) ≥ T i (Xi , σi )
for any t ∈ [tki , tk+1i ), where K represents the protocol gain
matrix to be designed; {tki | k ∈ N; t0i = 0} is a monotonically
increasing time sequence of event triggering/releasing instants
on agent i; x̃i (t) = xi (tki ) denotes the last triggered/released
data (e.g., state and output) on agent i; and the inequality
that G i (ei ) ≥ T i (Xi , σi ) specifies a triggering condition with
G i (ei ) denoting a function of the triggering error ei between
the last triggered data xi (tki ) and the current data xi (t), and
T i (Xi , σi ) denoting a threshold function determining when to
release the next data; Xi denotes either the current data or the
last triggered data on agent i or the combinational triggered
data from agent i’s neighbors; and σi ∈ [0, 1) denotes a static
threshold parameter.
Note from the control protocol (1) that once the condition
G i (ei ) < T i (Xi , σi ) is violated, the continuous data xi (t) will
be sampled and released over the communication network. As
a result, the set of triggering instants must satisfy {tki } ⊂ R in
a continuous-time case and {tki } ⊂ N in a discrete-time case.
This means that ETSM1 produces sporadic data transmis-
sions over the communication network and is thus capable of
saving certain communication resources that were devoted to
transmitting those “unneeded” or “unnecessary” data packets.
B. Key Issues in ETSMs
To sustain both the correctness of ETSM1 and the practical
implementation of the event-triggered control protocol (1), the
following two key issues need to be well addressed.
1) Strictly Positive Minimal Interevent Time: Define the
interevent time of ETSM1 as Tki = tk+1 i − tki . It is clear that
when Tk → 0, one has that tk+1 → tk . As a consequence, the
i i i
notorious Zeno behavior, which causes an infinite number of
events (e.g., samplings, broadcasts, and controller updates) in a
finite time period, occurs. Undoubtedly, a strictly lower bound
of the minimal interevent time (MIET) Tmin i = min{Tki }∞k=0
is indispensable to make the event-based coordination control
protocol (1) practically implementable in a continuous-time
case. In a discrete-time case [23]–[25], however, it is straight-
forward that Tmini ≥ 1, thus naturally excluding the Zeno
behavior.
2) Event-Triggered Sampling Versus Event-Triggered
Transmission: Under the control protocol (1), at each trig-
gering time tki , the continuous data xi (t) are simultaneously
sampled and transmitted over communication networks.
Consequently, sampling instants are identical to triggering
instants and further transmission instants, leading to an
event-triggered sampling (ETS)-based scheduling mechanism.
In contrast, under event-triggered transmission (ETT), sam-
plings and data transmissions take place at different discrete
instants of time. Such an ETT-based scheduling mechanism
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is commonly known as a sampled-data-based ETSM [3], [8]
or a periodic ETSM [26], [27] in the literature. In this case,
ETSM1 can be modified as
 
i
ETSM2 : tk+1 h = inf t > tki h | G i (ei ) ≥ T i (Xi , σi ) (2)
where {tki h| tki ∈ N; k ∈ N; t0i = 0}; {kh|k ∈ N} denotes
the sequence of sampling instants with h > 0 being the fixed
sampling period; ei = xi (tki h) − xi (kh). Note that tki ∈ N in
ETT while tki ∈ R in ETS.
Further comparisons of ETS and ETT are made from the
following two aspects.
1) Requirement of Continuous Monitoring and/or Periodic
Sampling: To implement the ETS-based ETSM1 , a ded-
icated hardware is required to persistently monitor the
continuous data xi (t), which causes extra expenditure for
a practical MAS or may be technically impossible for a
cyber–physical application of the control protocol (1). In
contrast, ETT-based ETSM2 needs to be checked at only
sampling instants of time {kh}, which naturally circum-
vents continuous monitoring. On the other hand, ETT
inevitably inherits the drawbacks of conventional peri-
odic sampling and synchronous sampling, and thus does
not contribute to a reduction of energy consumption on
the sensor. This is because the sensor is now deployed
to sample the continuous data xi (t) after a fixed period
of time no matter whether it is necessary. Whereas, ETS
performs sampling actions only as needed.
2) Guarantee of MIET: Under ETS, it is generally dif-
ficult to determine a strictly positive MIET for the
control protocol (1) in the presence of unknown exoge-
nous inputs and/or when the threshold T i (Xi , σi ) in
ETSM1 is heavily dependent on data from neighbor-
ing agents. Nevertheless, under the ETT-based ETSM2 ,
it can be always ensured that Tmin i ≥ h > 0. From this
perspective, ETT-based ETSMs are more superior for
real-time implementation, where event-triggers perform
at some prescribed frequency, rather than continuously
as in ETS.
To elude continuous monitoring and thus facilitate physical
implementation of ETS-based ETSMs, a technique, known as
time regulation [28], [29], is commonly adopted, which leads
to the following modified version of ETSM1 :
 
ETSM3 : tk+1i
= inf t > tki + τ |G i (ei ) ≥ T i (Xi , σi ) (3)
where τ > 0 is a constant time threshold acting as time regu-
lation or a waiting time between two consecutive event times.
i
More specifically, the next triggering instant tk+1 is always
generated after at least τ time units. In this sense, the minimal
MIET is enforced to be Tmin i ≥ τ > 0.
C. What is Dynamic ETSM?
An ETSM is known as a static ETSM (hereinafter known
as sETSM) in which the threshold function T i (Xi , σi ) relies
only on time information and/or system information (such as
state, output, or estimate) available at the local agent side. A
brief summary of some typical sETSMs used in the literature
and their main features is provided in Table II.
GE et al.: DYNAMIC EVENT-TRIGGERED DISTRIBUTED COORDINATION CONTROL AND ITS APPLICATIONS: A SURVEY OF TRENDS AND TECHNIQUES 3115

TABLE II
C LASSIFICATION OF T YPICAL ETSM S FOR E VENT-T RIGGERED C OORDINATION C ONTROL

An ETSM is classified as a dynamic ETSM (hereinafter
known as dETSM), where the threshold function T i (Xi , σi )
includes both available system information and auxiliary or
additional internal variable having its own dynamics. For
example, a typical threshold function of dETSMs takes the
following form:
 1 2 1
 
T i (Xi , σi ) = σi  2 Xi  + θi (t) (4)
δi
where θi (t) denotes the auxiliary or internal variable and δi > 0
denotes a prescribed constant. Some representative dETSMs
and their main features are also summarized in Table II.
D. Why is Dynamic ETSM Needed?
In the threshold function (4), the dynamic variable θi (t)
usually possesses some promising feature. For example, a
dETSM with a non-negative internal variable θi (t) [11] is
first proposed for dealing with scheduling stabilizing control
tasks for linear systems. It is theoretically proved that the
lower bound on interevent times cannot be smaller than
the one obtained by a traditional sETSM [30]. Compared
to the traditional sETSMs, the average interevent time of the
event-trigger (4) can be significantly enlarged due to the non-
negative property of the introduced internal dynamic variable
θi (t).
Table II summarizes some existing dETSMs, associated
with the introduction of such a non-negative internal vari-
able, for tackling various multiagent coordination problems. In
what follows, we would like to highlight another three types
of dETSMs which explore different dynamic parameters of
their own dynamics in the threshold function T i (Xi , σi ). More
specifically, T i (Xi , σi ) is dependent on the dynamically chang-
ing threshold parameter σi (t) in contrast to its static threshold
parameter σi in the control protocol (1).
1) Monotonic-Threshold-Parameter-Based dETSMs: Note
that the internal dynamic variable of the dETSM [11] and
its miscellaneous variants in the literature share one common
feature, namely, its nonmonotonic characteristic. There have
been some researchers suggesting to employ some monotoni-
cally varying functions to adjust the static threshold parameter
σi in the control protocol (1). The motivation of considering
a time-varying threshold parameter σi in an ETSM has been
well justified [18], [41], [42].
Continuous-data-based and sampled-data-based dETSMs
[17] are proposed to deal with the problem of event-triggered

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3116 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 50, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2020
leader–follower consensus, where the threshold parameter of
each event-trigger is monotonically decreasing and dynami-
cally adjusted according to some triggering-error-dependent
law. A similar monotonic-threshold-based dETSM based on
sampled data [18] is adopted to resolve the problem of dis-
tributed formation control. It is numerically demonstrated
that by allowing more data packets to be transmitted over
the network, such a dETSM can achieve better formation
performance for the simulated robotic team than a traditional
sETSM based on the same parameters. It is not difficult to
imagine that these dETSMs may be advantageous when the
system designers realize that the actual bandwidth is idle,
under which situation more data packets increasingly allow
to be transmitted over the network in such a way to seek
high system performance requirements. It seems reasonable
to construct a type of dETSM, where the threshold parameter
is monotonically increasing and can be dynamically adjusted
via some triggering-error-dependent law, as done in [20].
Such dynamic event-based scheduling may be beneficial for
accounting for a practical scenario of busy bandwidth status
or heavy network traffic during the whole implementation of
event-triggered coordination control tasks.
2) Adaptive-Threshold-Parameter-Based dETSMs: An
adaptive-threshold-parameter-based dETSM is classified as
the ETSM whose threshold parameter is dynamically tuned
based on some adaptive rules and is generally nonmonotonic.
For example, an adaptive dETSM is established to deal with
the issue of load frequency control for networked multiarea
power systems [43], where the value of threshold parameter is
adaptively adjusted based on the past and current transmitted
data packets, i.e., x(tk−1 h) and x(tk h). More specifically, when
x(tk h) > x(tk−1 h), one uses σ (tk h) < σ (tk−1 h) to enable
a higher transmission frequency; otherwise, σ (tk h) > σ (tk−1 h)
is used instead. Through adjusting the threshold parameter
online, it is shown that more communication resources can
be potentially saved.
An adaptive event-triggered control approach [44] is
proposed to seek consensus for a class of second-order MASs
with unknown nonlinear dynamics. The threshold parameter
is configured to depend on the time-varying feedback control
gain parameter such that both the constructed consensus con-
troller and the event-trigger can be adaptively regulated at the
same time. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that such an
adaptive dETSM may confront an implementation issue when
the control commands are remotely computed since it is gen-
erally difficult to keep both the remote controller and the local
event-trigger synchronously scheduled at all times.
3) Unknown-Threshold-Parameter-Based dETSMs: In this
case, the threshold parameter σi (t) of each event-trigger
allows to be generally unknown. The co-design of such a
dETSM and a coordination control strategy can be initiated
from the classical robust control theory-based approaches by
assuming that the unknown threshold is bounded or follows
well-defined statistical properties. For example, the threshold
parameter of an event-trigger is assumed to be uncertain and
time varying with attainable upper and lower bounds [41],
which reads as 0 < σ i ≤ σi (t) ≤ σ i < 1. Then, the
co-design of threshold-parameter-dependent distributed filters
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and triggering mechanisms is addressed by a polytope-like
transformation.
Note that most of the existing ETSMs in the published lit-
erature, either static or dynamic, are based on deterministic
triggering strategies, which implies that the event times are
computed by using precise information of the system and/or
auxiliary/internal parameter. A promising yet challenging issue
is to randomly determine the triggering times. A selection for
a random threshold parameter could be one of such stochastic
ETSMs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are few
results available on event-triggered coordination control under
stochastic triggering.
III. A PPLICATION TO E VENT-T RIGGERED D ISTRIBUTED
S ECONDARY C ONTROL OF AC M ICROGRIDS
A. Background
With an ever-increasing demand for integrating renewable
energy sources, such as wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and
fuel cells, into power grids, a microgrid has been regarded as a
promising solution and gained great popularity all around the
world. A microgrid is often composed of distributed genera-
tions (DGs), energy storages (ESs), and loads, and operates in
either a grid-connected mode or an islanded mode [45], [46].
In an alternating current (AC) microgrid, two fundamental
issues are to ensure the stability of frequency and voltage,
and to efficiently manage the power. To handle these issues, a
three-layer hierarchical control structure has been widely used,
which includes a primary control layer, a secondary control
layer, and a tertiary control layer [47]. More specifically, in a
primary control layer, decentralized droop control, which can
emulate virtual inertia in traditional synchronous generators, is
a commonly used approach to achieving frequency and voltage
stability as well as power/load sharing without any communi-
cation. However, an essential drawback of this approach is that
some deviations of frequency and voltages from their reference
values will be introduced, leading to the inaccurate frequency
and voltage regulation and power sharing. As a result, a sec-
ondary control layer is employed to eliminate the derivations.
As the highest layer, tertiary control aims to realize efficient
and optimal power management.
Secondary control paradigms of microgrids can be arguably
classified into three types: 1) centralized secondary con-
trol [48]; 2) decentralized secondary control [49]; and 3) dis-
tributed secondary control [50]. Compared with centralized
and decentralized paradigms, distributed secondary control
offers several benefits, such as reduced consumption of
resources, improved efficiency and reliability, and moderate
complexity of design and installation. It is well acknowledged
that a microgrid can be viewed as a cyber–physical distributed
networked system, as shown in Fig. 1. Up until now, a vari-
ety of advanced distributed coordination control schemes for
MASs have already been tailored into secondary control of
microgrids [51]–[54].
B. Related Works
Distributed secondary control necessitates support from a
communication network to undertake data exchanges among
GE et al.: DYNAMIC EVENT-TRIGGERED DISTRIBUTED COORDINATION CONTROL AND ITS APPLICATIONS: A SURVEY OF TRENDS AND TECHNIQUES 3117
Fig. 1. MAS-based cyber–physical microgrids.
neighborhood DGs. In this sense, how to efficiently allo-
cate communication resources and achieve desired control
performance for microgrids becomes an important yet chal-
lenging issue. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there
have been a few results reported in the existing literature
regarding distributed event-triggered secondary control for AC
microgrids [55]–[61]. For example, to accomplish frequency
restoration, voltage restoration, and power sharing for inverter-
based isolated microgrids, two event-triggered cooperative
control schemes [56] are proposed. The problem of dis-
tributed event-triggered secondary control [60] is presented
to realize frequency and voltage restoration based on the
requirement of the initial supply and demand balance. A
proportional–integral consensus-based control scheme incor-
porating Zeno-free event-triggered communication [55] is
proposed to achieve voltage, frequency, and power-sharing
control for autonomous inverter-based microgrids. Considering
different time scales between economic dispatch and sec-
ondary control, a distributed event-triggered secondary control
method [58] is proposed for droop-controlled AC microgrids.
In the presence of communication delays, distributed event-
triggered voltage control of AC microgrids is resolved [59].
Taking into account communication noises and limited band-
width constraints simultaneously, a stochastic distributed
event-triggered secondary control scheme [61] is presented
to achieve mean-square frequency and voltage restoration of
DGs as well as optimal active power sharing. Note that the
event-triggered communication mechanisms [55]–[61] man-
date continuous monitoring and computation of triggering
mechanisms, significantly causing much operational burden
and complexity of practical implementation. To address this
issue, a distributed secondary control scheme incorporating a
sampled-data-based ETSM [62] is presented.
In what follows, the results in [62] are extended under
dETSM through a case study. Comparisons between different
ETSMs and further discussions on event-triggered distributed
secondary control are provided.
C. Case Study
1) Electrical Network Model: Consider an inverter-based
microgrid with N DGs, where each DG unit is composed of
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Fig. 2. Basic hierarchical control scheme for microgrids [62].
a DG voltage source, a voltage source inverter (VSI), an LC
filter, and an output connector. A hierarchical control struc-
ture of each DG is shown in Fig. 2. Nodes i and m are
connected by a physical power line with a complex admit-
tance Yim . All the power lines are assumed to be lossless,
namely, admittances of all power lines are purely inductive.
Then, the admittance between nodes i and m is denoted
by Yim = jBim , where Bim < 0 is the inductive suscep-
tance. If there is no connection between nodes i and m, then
Yim = 0. The apparent power flow at node i is represented by
N
Si = P N
i + jQi , where Pi = m=1 Vi Vm Bim sin(θi − θm ) and
Qi = m=1 Vi Vm Bim cos(θi − θm ) are the active and reactive
power, respectively, with Vi and θi being the voltage amplitude
and phase angle of node i, respectively.
2) Primary Control and Secondary Control: The following
P − f and Q − V droop control is employed for DG i:
wi = wni − mi Pi , vodi = Vni − ni Qi , voqi = 0 (5)
where wi is the frequency and vmag,i = v2odi + v2oqi is the
output voltage magnitude of DG i; wni and Vni are the control
references for DG i to be determined at the secondary control
layer; Pi and Qi are the active and reactive power of DG i,
respectively; and mi and ni are droop coefficients.
3) Problem Formulation: The balance between total active
power supply and load demand can be expressed by
N
Pi = PLi + PLoss (6)
i=1 i=1
where PLi and PLoss represent the load demand at bus i
and the total active power loss of the microgrid,respec-
tively. The power loss satisfies [63]: PLoss = α N L
i=1 Pi ,
where α is the rate of total load power. To ensure that
the active power can be dispatched to the loads at different
buses according to generation capacity of DGs, the refer-
ence power injection of DG i is set by Pri = (1 + α)λd PM i ,
 
where λd = [( N PL )/( N PM )] is the desired utiliza-
i=1 i i=1 i
tion level and PM
i denotes the maximum generation limit of
DG i. Obviously, λd is a global parameter which includes
all the DGs’ maximum generation limits and loads. Thus, to
estimate the common utilization level λd , a local variable λi
is introduced for each DG i. Then, the reference power Pri
is modified as Pri = (1 + α)PM i λi . From (5), one has that
3118 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 50, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2020

 M λ
wni = (uw
i + mi (1 + α)Pi ui ) where
λ
ẇi = uw
i , λ̇i = ui (7)
with uλi and uw (a) (b)
i being the auxiliary control inputs.
Problem 1: The control objective is to design distributed
event-triggered secondary controllers uw λ
i and ui in (7) such
that: 1) the frequency of each DG is regulated to the reference
point wr , namely, limt→∞ |wi (t) − wr | = 0 and 2) the active (c) (d)
power sharing can be achieved, namely, limt→∞ |λi (t) − λd | =
0, while guaranteeing the supply and demand balance (6).
4) Co-Design of the dETSM and the Secondary Controller:
Let tk h be the event-triggering sampled-data instant with h (e) (f)
being a sampling period, and λ̃(kh) = λi (tki h), auxiliary vari-
able z̃(kh) = zi (tki h), w̃(kh) = wi (tki h) for [tki h, tk+1
i h). Then,
the relative measurement errors between the last triggered Fig. 3. Comparison of control performance between periodic communication,
and current sampled-data information of DG i are defined sETSM [62], and dETSM (8). (a) and (b) Periodic. (c) and (d) Static. (e) and
as eλi (kh)  λ̃i (kh) − λi (kh), ezi (kh)  z̃i (kh) − zi (kh), and (f) Dynamic.

i (kh)  w̃i (kh) − wi (kh) for [tk h, tk+1 h). For DG i, the
ew i i

following monotonic-threshold-based dETSM is considered:

  
i
tk+1 h  inf kh  fiw (kh) > 0 or fiP (kh) > 0 (8)
kh>tki h
N
where fiw (kh)  |ew i (kh)| − σi (kh)( j=1 aij (w̃i (kh) −
2

w̃j (kh))2 − bi (wi (kh) − wr )2 ) and fiP (kh)  g1i |eλi (kh)|2 +

g2i |ezi (kh)|2 − εi (kh) N j=1 aij (λ̃i (kh) − λ̃j (kh)) with g1i > 0,
2

g2i > 0 and the dynamic parameters being chosen as

 2  2 
εi (kh) + ε i g1i eλi (kh) + g2i ezi (kh)
εi ((k + 1)h) =
 2  2  Fig. 4. Comparison of communication efficiency between periodic commu-
1 + g1i eλi (kh) + g2i ezi (kh) nication, sETSM [62], and dETSM (8).

 2 
σi (kh) + σ i ew i (kh) 
σi ((k + 1)h) =  2 5) Simulation Validation: Comparative studies between
1 + ew (kh)
i the traditional periodic scheduling mechanism, the existing
where 0 < εi ≤ εi (0) ≤ ε i and 0 < σ i ≤ σi (0) ≤ σ i are the
given initial conditions. It is easy to prove that the sequences
{εi (kh)} and {σi (kh)} are monotonically nondecreasing for all
k ∈ N and satisfy 0 < ε i ≤ εi (0) ≤ εi (kh) ≤ ε i and 0 < σ i ≤
σi (0) ≤ σi (kh) ≤ σ i , respectively.
Based on dETSM (8), the distributed secondary controllers
for active power sharing and frequency regulation are con-
structed as
 
sETSM [62], and the proposed dETSM are performed. The
same simulation parameters as [62] are adopted. We further
choose ε̄i = 2 and σ̄i = 1.5.
Comparison results are shown in Figs. 3 and 4. From Fig.3,
it is clear to see that the control performance under three
scheduling mechanisms is nearly identical, in spite of some
little fluctuations of frequency during the control adjustment
in the cases of sETSM and dETSM. However, the number

N  of triggered data packets over the communication network in

uλi (t) = −k1 PM λ
i i (t) − P L
i − k2 aij λ̃i (kh) − λ̃j (kh) the dETSM case is significantly reduced, especially compared
j=1 with the periodic scheduling case, as clearly demonstrated in

N Fig. 4. It thus can be concluded that, while maintaining the

 
+ k3 aij z̃i (kh) − z̃j (kh) (9a) nearly identical control performance, dETSM (8) outperforms
j=1 the traditional periodic scheduling and sETSM [62] in terms
 of communication efficiency in this case study.

N
żi (t) = −k4 aij λ̃i (kh) − λ̃j (kh) (9b)
j=1 D. Challenging Issues

N
    Although a few distributed event-triggered secondary con-
i (t) = −k5
uw aij w̃i (kh) − w̃j (kh) − k5 bi wi − wr (9c)
trol approaches have been reported in the literature for AC
j=1
microgrids, there are several significant issues worthy of fur-
for t ∈ i where kl > 0 (l = 1, 2, . . . , 5) are the
[tki h, tk+1 h), ther investigations, especially in terms of relaxing stringent
control gains, and bi = 1 if the DG i can have access to the assumptions and meeting practical requirements.
reference frequency wr ; bi = 0, otherwise. It is assumed that 1) Robust Event-Triggered Distributed Secondary Control
at least one DG can get access to the reference frequency. With Uncertainties: The large-scale penetration of

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GE et al.: DYNAMIC EVENT-TRIGGERED DISTRIBUTED COORDINATION CONTROL AND ITS APPLICATIONS: A SURVEY OF TRENDS AND TECHNIQUES 3119
renewable energy resources such as wind and photo-
voltaic, and loads such as electric vehicles introduces
uncertainty and intermittency inherently, which severely
affect the stability of microgrids. In a cyber layer, the uti-
lization of a communication network also induces com-
munication uncertainty, such as communication noises,
delays, and quantization. However, little research effort
has been made to study robust event-triggered secondary
control under physical and/or cyber uncertainties, which
deserves further attention.
2) Cloud-Aided Event-Triggered Distributed Secondary
Control: In recent years, a cloud-based technology has
been increasingly applied into various engineering fields
since it can provide a configurable and efficient platform,
allowing users to share resources and information via a
cloud server. In this setting, DGs of microgrids allow
to communicate with their neighbors indirectly through
a cloud station by uploading/downloading relative data
information. Whereas, a critical concern is to determine
an efficient communication mechanism to schedule data
exchanges between DGs in a microgrid and the cloud
server, which demands a deep investigation.
3) Secure Event-Triggered Distributed Secondary Control
Against Malicious Cyber and Physical Attacks:
Networked DGs inevitably make the communication
infrastructure of the grid more open to the cyber world
and increasingly vulnerable to malicious attacks. Any
attack launched on either the physical grid layer or the
cyber communication layer would potentially endanger
stable and secure operation of microgrids. For example,
in 2019, Venezuela’ power grids suffered from both
cyber and physical attacks, resulting in large-scale
power blackout for over 24 h. Therefore, it is of
both theoretical and practical significance to establish
secure event-triggered secondary control strategies that
are capable of maintaining microgrid stability against
malicious attacks.
IV. A PPLICATION TO E VENT-T RIGGERED D ISTRIBUTED
P LATOONING C ONTROL OF AUTOMATED V EHICLES
A. Background
Platooning represents a promising intelligent transporta-
tion system technology for achieving an automated highway
system (AHS) by cooperatively driving a group of vehicles
on a given stretch of highway. Potential benefits of platooning
include alleviated human reaction, reduced fuel consumption,
improved road safety, highway capacity, and traffic congestion
relief [64], [65], since it would drastically reduce intervehicle
distances and headway, thus greatly increasing the throughput
capacity of the highway.
The control objective of platooning is to cooperatively
maneuver a team of automated vehicles to produce and main-
tain desired spacing policies and the same velocities (and/or
accelerations). In modern vehicles, cooperative adaptive cruise
control (CACC) has been extensively employed to coordinate
the desired platoon behavior, which enables each vehicle in the
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Fig. 5. Automated vehicular platoon in a highway scenario under VANET-
enabled V2V and V2I communication.
platoon to communicate with its peers via wireless vehicle-to-
vehicle (V2V) communication or roadside infrastructures such
as roadside units via wireless vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I)
communication, as demonstrated in Fig. 5. Hence, vehicles
under CACC can not only acquire their intervehicle distances
and relative velocities but also share useful data among their
neighboring vehicles or roadside units, via the integrated wire-
less communication interfaces on board. In practice, these
wirelessly communicated vehicles form a VANET, which
serves as the cornerstone of AHSs.
Although VANET facilitates intervehicle communication in
AHSs, the shared and broadcast nature of its wireless com-
munication protocol inevitably leads to restricted bandwidth
and data transmission rates which are worthy of careful atten-
tion to platooning control design. These issues may become
particularly conspicuous when the platoon scale increases and
vehicle data are broadcast in an instantaneous way. From this
perspective, the existing continuous and periodic data commu-
nication mechanisms for platooning control [64]–[71] need to
be reevaluated as they do not take into account the bandwidth
and data rate constraints during the design of platoon control
strategies and algorithms.
B. Related Works
Note that there are a few results available concerning event-
triggered platooning control in the published literature. The
main difficulty comes from designing a practically imple-
mentable Zeno-free ETSM to guarantee the desired platooning
control performance in the presence of unknown disturbances.
Recently, an event-triggered CACC scheme [29] is proposed to
guarantee L2 string stability and robustness of vehicular pla-
toons against transmission delays and exogenous input. It is
experimentally shown that the platoon can preserve the simi-
lar control performance as conventional time-triggered control
schemes while also alleviating communication resource uti-
lization. Considering discretized models of vehicles over
Markovian V2V fading channels, an event-triggered platoon-
ing strategy [72] is proposed to examine the stochastic L2
string stability of the platoon. A dETSM is employed to reduce
the transmission frequency of sampled velocities and acceler-
ations between networked following vehicles [19]. However,
it is noteworthy that these event-triggered platooning control
3120 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 50, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2020

schemes [19], [29], [72] are limited to one specific information
flow topology (i.e., one-vehicle look-ahead) and not extend-
able to platoons with other information flow topologies. The
problem of event-triggered vehicle coordination [73] is con-
sidered for vehicle platoons using a nonlinear unidirectional
controller. Nevertheless, the adopted controller for each vehi-
cle needs to access the continuous position and velocity from
its neighboring vehicles.
In what follows, we present a brief discussion on how static
and dynamic event-triggered coordination control strategies
are applied to VANET-based platoons.
C. Case Study
1) Vehicle Longitudinal Dynamics: Consider a platoon of
N VANET-enabled automated vehicles moving along a single
straight and flat lane. The vehicular platoon is composed of one
leader vehicle, indexed by i = 1, and N − 1 follower vehicles,
indexed by i = 2, 3, . . . , N, whose information flow topol-
ogy is modeled by a weighted graph G. The leader vehicle’s
information is available to only a subset of the followers while
the leader receives no information from any follower. The fol-
lowing linearized third-order model, which has been widely
used to describe vehicle longitudinal dynamics [66]–[68], is
adopted for vehicle i ∈ V:
ṗi (t) = vi (t), v̇i (t) = ai (t), ς ȧi (t) + ai (t) = ui (t) + wi (t)
(10)
i σ1i2 (t) 2 ei (t) (12)
zi (t) = Cεi (t) = [1, 0, 0]εi (t) as a performance output. The
main problem to be addressed is then stated as follows.
Problem 2: For the VANET-enabled platoon (10) over a
connected and undirected topology G, the control objective
is to design a suitable distributed event-triggered platoon con-
troller ui (t) such that: 1) the platoon tracking error εi (t) is
asymptotically stable when wi (t) ≡ 0 and 2) under the zero
initial condition and nonzero wi (t), the H∞ performance index
∞ ∞
0 z i (t)22 dt < γ 2 0 wi (t)22 dt is satisfied for a prescribed
attenuation level γ > 0.
3) Event-Based Distributed Platooning Control Protocol:
The vehicular platoon is maneuvered over a VANET, where
each follower vehicle is equipped with an onboard sensor for
measuring its continuous states and sampling the measure-
ment at discretized time instants, and a wireless transceiver
for broadcasting the sampled data to its neighboring vehicles
over a suitable information flow topology. When to sample and
transmit each vehicle’s information is made by the following
monotonic-threshold-based dETSM:
 
i
tk+1 = inf t > tki + τ | fiσ1 (t) ≥ 0) (11)
for any i ∈ V\{1}, where τ > 0, fiσ1 (t)  (1/2) ei (t)2 −
 (1/2) (χ̃ (t) − χ̃ (t))2 , e (t) = x̃ (t) − x (t),
σ1i (t) N j=1 aij  i j i i i
χ̃i (t)  x̃i (t) − di and σ1i (t) represents a dynamic threshold
parameter whose value is adjusted according to the following
dynamic rule:
 1 2
 
σ̇1i (t) = −

which pi , vi , and ai denote the position, velocity, and accelera-
i > 0 being a prescribed constant and 0 < σ1i (0) ≤
tion of the ith vehicle, respectively; ς > 0 denotes the inertial
time lag in the powertrain; ui denotes the desired control
(acceleration) input; and wi ∈ L2 [0, ∞) denotes the unknown
external disturbance input on each follower vehicle. Without
loss of generality, it is assumed that the leader vehicle runs at
a constant velocity ṗ1 (t) = v1 (t) and v̇1 (t) = 0 [69]–[71].
with
σ1 < 1 being a given initial condition. Furthermore, σ1i (t) is
monotonously nonincreasing for all t ∈ R and satisfies 0 <
σ1i (t) ≤ σ1i (0) ≤ σ1 < 1 [17].
For any i ∈ V\{1}, the following event-based distributed
platooning control protocol is constructed:

N 
2) Problem Formulation: The control objective of platoon- ui (t) = aij Kp p̃i (t) − di0 − p̃j (t) − dj0
ing is to design a suitable distributed coordinated control j=1
protocol ui (t) for the N − 1 follower vehicles such that they    
can reach the same speed and acceleration as the leader, + Kv ṽi (t) − ṽj (t) + Ka ãi (t) − ãj (t) (13)
namely, vi (t) → v1 (t) and ai (t) → a1 (t) as t → ∞,
for all t ∈ [tki , tk+1
i ), where Kp , Kv , and Ka are the gain
for any i ∈ V\{1}, while maintaining a desired intervehi-
parameters of the control protocol to be designed.
cle space, namely, pi+1 (t) − pi (t) → di+1,i as t → ∞.
4) Co-Design of the dETSM and the Platoon Control
Denote by xi (t) = [pi (t), vi (t), ai (t)]T the stacked vehicle
Protocol: To solve Problem 2, we present a scalable co-design
state vector. The platooning control objective can be formu-
criterion as: for given positive constants σ1 ∈ (0, 1), γ , and ,
lated as limt→∞ (xi (t) − x1 (t) − di ) = 0 ∀ i ∈ V\{1}, where
the platoon tracking error under the desired dETSM (11) and
di = [di0 , 0, 0]T with di0 being the desired distance between
the distributed platoon control protocol (13) is asymptotically
follower i and the leader. By setting di0 = i · d1 , a constant
stable with the prescribed H∞ level γ , if there exist matrices
spacing policy [70], [73], i.e., di+1,i ≡ d1 is retrieved. ˜ > 0, K̃, and Q̃ such that
P̃ > 0, 
Denote by the platoon tracking error εi (t) = ⎡ ⎤
p
[εi (t), εiv (t), εia (t)]T for any i ∈ V\{1}, where 1m 2 3
p
εi (t) = pi (t) − p1 (t) − di0 , εiv (t) = vi (t) − v1 (t), and ⎣ T −γ 2 0 ⎦ < 0, m = 1, 2 (14)
2
εia (t) = ai (t) − a1 (t). Due to the presence of the external 3T 0 −1
disturbance wi on each follower vehicle, the robustness of the (pq)
platoon against its propagation is required to be examined, where 1m = [1m ], p, q = 1, 2, 3, denotes a symmetric 3-
(11)
which is commonly known as string stability [29], [66], by-3 block matrix with its entries given by 1m = AQ̃ +
[72]. Similar to [19] and [70], we choose the H∞ norm ˜ (12) = P̃ − Q̃ + Q̃T AT +
Q̃T AT + λ̃m (BK̃ + K̃ T BT ) + σ1 λ̃2m , 1m
(13) ˜ + λ̃m BK̃, (22) = −Q̃ − Q̃T ,
as a performance measure and the position tracking error λ̃m K̃ B , 1m = σ1 λ̃m 
T T 2
1m

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GE et al.: DYNAMIC EVENT-TRIGGERED DISTRIBUTED COORDINATION CONTROL AND ITS APPLICATIONS: A SURVEY OF TRENDS AND TECHNIQUES 3121

(23) (33) ˜ 2 = [BT , BT , 0]T ;

1m = λ̃m BK̃, 1m = (σ1 λ̃2m − 1);
3 = [CQ̃, 0, 0] ; A = [0, 1, 0; 0, 0, 1; 0, 0, −1/ς ]; B =
T

[0; 0; 1/ς ]; λ̃1  mini∈V \{1} {λi } and λ̃2  maxi∈V \{1} {λi }
denote the minimal and maximal eigenvalues of H = L + P0
with L being the Laplacian of the follower graph and P0 =
diag{a21 , a31 , . . . , aN1 } with ai1 > 0 if and only if the ith fol-
lower has a direct information flow from the leader, and ai1 =
0 otherwise. Furthermore, the protocol gain matrix K is given Fig. 6. Snapshots of the coordinated platoon at different times under sETSM
by K = [Kp , Kv , Ka ] = K̃ Q̃−1 and the desired event-triggering ( 1i = 0 and σ1 = 0.85 in (11)) over bidirectional topology.
weighting matrix  is given by  = Q̃−T  ˜ Q̃−1 .
5) Simulation Validation: A platoon consisting of one
leader vehicle and seven follower vehicles is considered, where
the longitudinal dynamics of each vehicle are described by
system (10) with ς = 0.45 s. It is our aim to guarantee
that the platoon eventually achieves the same time-varying
leader speed/acceleration and maintains the desired spacing
as 15 m guided by the leader regardless of the time-varying
external disturbance, while at the same time consuming a rea-
sonable level of communication resources. We perform the
subsequent simulation for 100 s and set τ = 0.02 s and
 = 0.07. The information flow topology is chosen as the
well-studied bidirectional topology [68]. A sinusoidal exter-
nal disturbance wi (t) = 1.5sin(2t) m/s2 for t ∈ [3, 23) s;
wi (t) = −0.8sin(t) m/s2 for t ∈ [45, 65) s is imposed on the
each follower vehicle in the platoon.
We first carry out the simulation by testing the robust
performance of a traditional sETSM-based platooning con-
Fig. 7. Snapshots of the coordinated platoon at different times under
trol protocol over the bidirectional topology in the presence dETSM (11) ( 1i = 0.1, σ1i (0) = 0.85) over bidirectional topology.
of the simulated external disturbance wi (t). This case can be
retrieved from dETSM (11) by forcing 1i = 0. It is found that
the proposed co-design criterion is feasible with an optimal than the simulated dETSM case by appropriately adjusting the
H∞ performance level γmin = 14.11 and an average data static threshold parameter σ1 . Meanwhile, it should be also
transmission rate of 87.49% over the communication network. pointed out that how to choose a suitable threshold parameter
Snapshots of the coordinated platoon at different times under σ1 for the sETSM requires certain experience from the system
the traditional sETSM-based platooning control protocol are designers. The comparative analysis above at least provides
provided in Fig. 6. It is noted that vehicle 3 and vehicle 4 a clear illustration that the consumption of scarce commu-
collide with each other at t = 4.1 s under sETSM, which nication resources of VANET can be significantly reduced,
means that the traditional sETSM-based platooning control however, at the cost of degraded or even disrupted platoon
approach violates the practical platoon safety requirement in control performance and safety.
this case. A possible cause of such a safety loss is that some
vehicular data packets that are not triggered by the sETSM
may contain useful information to achieve the desired platoon D. Challenging Issues
performance. As VANET has yet been prevalently utilized as a reliable
We next conduct the simulation under dETSM. Snapshots of wireless network technology to facilitate V2V and V2I com-
the coordinated platoon at different times are shown in Fig. 7, munication in AHSs, it becomes indispensable to develop
from which one can observe that: 1) the controlled platoon novel resource-efficient platooning control approaches which
successfully follows the leader and keeps the desired spac- promise both the satisfactory communication efficiency and
ing in this case. This also implies that the effects caused by the desired platoon performance and safety requirements. To
the external disturbances on followers’ accelerations and thus the best of our knowledge, event-triggered platooning control
velocities and positions are effectively attenuated downstream over a resource-constrained VANET has not been adequately
the string of vehicles, thus fulfilling the platoon stability and investigated and is still in its infancy. We suggest the following
safety requirements and 2) as expected, the average data trans- important issues that are worthy of further investigations.
mission rate under the dETSM increases to 97.41%. This is 1) Scalable Event-Triggered Platooning Control Over
reasonable because the dETSM allows more data packets to General Information Flow Topologies: Most of the exist-
be transmitted over the network such that the desired pla- ing event-triggered platooning control protocols and
toon performance can be achieved and preserved. However, algorithms are derived based on a specific information
one cannot claim superiority on the dETSM as generally the flow topology, making them not extendable to platoons
sETSM can also reach the similar or even better performance with other topologies, and also suffer from a scalability

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3122 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS, VOL. 50, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2020
issue, rendering them not applicable to large-scale and
ubiquitous automotive network access. To meet demands
on emerging advanced vehicular applications, VANET-
based platoons are now evolving to the Internet of
Vehicles (IoV) and cloud-based vehicles. Under these
scenarios, it is a promising research topic to achieve
scalable network and platoon control co-design.
2) Resilient Event-Triggered Platooning Control Under
Network-Induced Constraints: The use of wireless com-
munication in practical vehicular platoons inevitably
induces network transmission constraints, such as quan-
tization errors, communication delays, data packet
dropouts, fading channels, and dynamic topology vari-
ations, when vehicular data are propagated over wire-
less channels. How to maintain a better tradeoff
between communication efficiency and resilient platoon
performance against these network-induced constraints
is of great theoretical and practical significance, and
deserves a deep investigation.
3) Secure Event-Triggered Platooning Control Against
Malicious Attacks: Security of AHSs has been an
intensively concerned topic in the field of intelligent
transportation systems [74]. However, in the context of
event-triggered platooning control, how to mitigate the
adversarial impacts caused by cyber and physical attacks
and thus maintain the security of vehicular platoons has
been rarely addressed in the literature. This is important
because vehicular data are released over the network
only when needed, making them extremely pivotal to
guarantee desired platoon performance. Meanwhile, a
sophisticated adversary can leverage this fact to launch
malicious attacks during transmission of these “signif-
icant” data by modifying the contents of the data with
falsified information (e.g., deception attacks [75]) or
preventing the data from reaching its destinations (e.g.,
DoS attacks [76]). Thus, how to tackle the issue of
secure event-triggered platooning control in the presence
of malicious attacks requires further research effort.
V. C ONCLUSION
The recent progress in dynamic event-triggered distributed
coordination control, in terms of its motivation, techniques,
and challenges, has been examined. Two specific practical
examples in the fields of microgrids and automated vehi-
cles have been presented to demonstrate the applicability of
dynamic event-triggered coordination control approaches. In
each of the examples, a brief survey of the specific field,
including background, state-of-the-art results, case study, and
some important yet challenging issues, has been provided.
Note that research on distributed coordination control
has experienced rapid developments over the last decade.
This article presents only a small proportion of litera-
ture and is by no means complete. For example, some
closely relevant topics in the field, such as self-triggered
scheduling mechanisms [2], [8], distributed secure event-
triggered coordination [77]–[79], distributed event-triggered
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fault-tolerant coordination [80], [81], and distributed event-
triggered optimization [82]–[84], have not been discussed.
The distinctions and classifications of synchronous and asyn-
chronous triggering [7] in the surveyed distributed event-
triggered mechanisms need also to be systematically inves-
tigated. Furthermore, we have exemplified two typical appli-
cations of dynamic event-triggered coordination control algo-
rithms. Besides, another application is coordination control
of multiple unmanned marine vehicles [85]–[88] since either
offshore wireless communication or satellite communica-
tion under those practical scenarios necessitates inherently
resource-efficient distributed coordination control solutions.
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Xiaohua Ge (Member, IEEE) received the B.Eng.
degree in electronics and information engineering
from Nanchang Hangkong University, Nanchang,
China, in 2008, the M.Eng. degree in control
theory and control engineering from Hangzhou
Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China, in 2011, and
the Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from
Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, QLD,
Australia, in 2014.
From 2011 to 2013, he was a Research Assistant
with the Centre for Intelligent and Networked
Systems, Central Queensland University, where he was a Research Fellow
in 2014. From 2015 to 2017, he was a Research Fellow with the Griffith
School of Engineering, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia. He
is currently a Senior Lecturer with the School of Software and Electrical
Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
His research interests include distributed estimation over sensor networks,
distributed coordination in multiagent systems, and security and privacy
preserving in cyber–physical systems.
Dr. Ge was a Guest Editor of the IEEE T RANSACTION ON
S YSTEMS , M AN , AND C YBERNETICS : S YSTEMS, Information Sciences,
Neurocomputing, and Kybernetika.
Qing-Long Han (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.Sc.
degree in mathematics from Shandong Normal
University, Jinan, China, in 1983, and the M.Sc.
and Ph.D. degrees in control engineering and elec-
trical engineering from the East China University of
Science and Technology, Shanghai, China, in 1992
and 1997, respectively.
From September 1997 to December 1998,
he was a Postdoctoral Researcher Fellow with
the Laboratoire d’Automatique et d’Informatique
Industielle (currently, Laboratoire d’Informatique et
d’Automatique pour les Systémes), École Supérieure d’Ingénieurs de Poitiers
(currently, École Nationale Supérieure d’Ingénieurs de Poitiers), Université
de Poitiers, Poitiers, France. From January 1999 to August 2001, he
was a Research Assistant Professor with the Department of Mechanical
and Industrial Engineering, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville,
Edwardsville, IL, USA. From September 2001 to December 2014, he was
a Laureate Professor, an Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) with
the Higher Education Division, and the Founding Director of the Centre
for Intelligent and Networked Systems, Central Queensland University,
Rockhampton, QLD, Australia. From December 2014 to May 2016, he was
a Deputy Dean (Research) with the Griffith Sciences, and a Professor with
the Griffith School of Engineering, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD,
Australia. In May 2016, he joined the Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne, VIC, Australia, where he is currently a Pro Vice-Chancellor
(Research Quality) and a Distinguished Professor. His research interests
include networked control systems, multiagent systems, time-delay systems,
complex dynamical systems, and neural networks.
Prof. Han is a Highly Cited Researcher according to Clarivate Analytics
(formerly, Thomson Reuters). He is an Associate Editor of several inter-
national journals, including the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON C YBERNETICS,
IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NDUSTRIAL I NFORMATICS, IEEE Industrial
Electronics Magazine, IEEE/CAA J OURNAL OF AUTOMATICA S INICA,
Control Engineering Practice, and Information Sciences. He is a Fellow of
the Institution of Engineers Australia.
GE et al.: DYNAMIC EVENT-TRIGGERED DISTRIBUTED COORDINATION CONTROL AND ITS APPLICATIONS: A SURVEY OF TRENDS AND TECHNIQUES 3125
Lei Ding (Member, IEEE) received the B.Sc.
degree in automation and the M.Sc. and Ph.D.
degrees in control theory and control engineering
from Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China, in
2007, 2009, and 2014, respectively.
From November 2010 to November 2012, he was
a visiting Ph.D. student sponsored by the China
Scholarship Council with the Centre for Intelligent
and Networked Systems, Central Queensland
University, Rockhampton, QLD, Australia. From
January 2015 to January 2016, he was a Visiting
Research Fellow with Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
From May 2016 to January 2017, he was a Postdoctoral Associate with
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA. From February 2017 to March
2019, he worked as a Research Fellow with the Swinburne University
of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. In March 2019, he joined the
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China, where
he is currently a Professor with the Institute of Advanced Technology. His
research interests include event-triggered control and distributed cooperative
control of multiagent systems and their applications to smart grids.
Prof. Ding was a Guest Editor of the IEEE T RANSACTION ON S YSTEMS ,
M AN , AND C YBERNETICS : S YSTEMS and Information Sciences.
Yu-Long Wang (Member, IEEE) received the B.S.
degree in computer science and technology from
Liaocheng University, Liaocheng, China, in 2000,
and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in control sci-
ence and engineering from Northeastern University,
Shenyang, China, in 2006 and 2008, respectively.
He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and
a Research Fellow with Central Queensland
University, Rockhampton, QLD, Australia; an
Academic Visitor with the University of Adelaide,
Adelaide, SA, Australia; and a Professor with the
Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China. In 2017,
he was appointed as an Eastern Scholar by the Municipal Commission of
Education, Shanghai, China, and joined Shanghai University, Shanghai, where
he is currently a Professor. His current research interests include networked
control systems, fault detection, and motion control for marine vehicles.
Prof. Wang was a Guest Editor of Neurocomputing.
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Xian-Ming Zhang (Senior Member, IEEE) received
the M.Sc. degree in applied mathematics and the
Ph.D. degree in control theory and engineering from
Central South University, Changsha, China, in 1992
and 2006, respectively.
In 1992, he joined Central South University,
where he was an Associate Professor with the
School of Mathematics and Statistics. From 2007
to 2014, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow
and a Lecturer with the School of Engineering
and Technology, Central Queensland University,
Rockhampton, QLD, Australia. From 2014 to 2016, he was a Lecturer
with the Griffith School of Engineering, Griffith University, Gold Coast,
QLD, Australia. In 2016, he joined the Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne, VIC, Australia, where he is currently an Associate Professor
with the School of Software and Electrical Engineering. His current research
interests include H-infinity filtering, event-triggered control systems, net-
worked control systems, neural networks, distributed systems, and time-delay
systems.
Dr. Zhang was a recipient of the Second National Natural Science Award
in China in 2013, and the First Hunan Provincial Natural Science Award
in Hunan Province in China in 2011, both jointly with Prof. M. Wu and
Prof. Y. He, and the IET Premium Award in 2016, jointly with Prof. Q.-L. Han.
He is an Associate Editor of several international journals, including the IEEE
T RANSACTIONS ON C YBERNETICS, Neural Processing Letters, Journal of the
Franklin Institute, International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems,
Neurocomputing, and Neural Computing and Applications.