Structural Balance Control of Complex Dynamical Networks Based on State Observer for Dynamic Connection Relationships

This paper investigates the observer-based structural balance control for a class of complex dynamical networks. Generally speaking, a complete complex dynamical network is composed of two coupled subsystems, which are called node subsystem (NS) and connection relationship subsystem (CS), respectively. Similar to synchronization and stabilization of networks, the structural balance is another phenomenon of networks and determined by the state of connection relationships. However, it is not feasible to design the controller for the CS directly because the states of the connection relationships are difficult to be measured accurately in practical applications. In order to solve this problem, a state observer for the CS has been designed. Thus, the structural balance controller in the CS can be directly designed by using the estimation information of the state observer. Then, with the help of the Lyapunov stability theory, it is proved that the CS can asymptotically track a given structural balance matrix under the influence of the observer-based controller. Finally, the results derived from this paper are demonstrated by performing a numerical example.