Dynamic Event-Triggered Secure Fault-Tolerant Privacy-Preserving Consensus Tracking for Multi-Agent Systems Under Markov Switching Topologies and DoS Attacks

Abstract

This article investigates the secure fault-tolerant (FT) privacy-preserving consensus tracking problem for nonlinear multi-agent systems (MASs) under dynamic event-triggered communications, where physical-layer uncertainties and information-layer challenges are simultaneously considered. The former include external disturbances and actuator faults, while the latter involve Markov switching topologies, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, passive eavesdropping threats, and communication-resource constraints. Different from most existing results that mainly address cyber security or physical safety separately, this work develops a unified distributed control framework integrating privacy preservation, secure communication, and FT coordination. Specifically, a masked virtual reference system is introduced to generate exchanged communication signals, thereby separating network transmissions from the real faulty dynamics and reducing the direct exposure of real-layer information. Based on this system, a distributed dynamic event-triggered mechanism (DETM) is designed to guarantee secure leader-follower tracking under stochastic topology switching and DoS-induced communication interruptions while reducing communication burden. Meanwhile, an adaptive FT anti-disturbance controller is constructed for the real faulty system to compensate for actuator faults, bias faults, external disturbances, and uncertainties. Moreover, a piecewise Lyapunov method is developed to establish closed-loop boundedness, practical tracking convergence, and exclusion of Zeno behavior. The non-identifiability property of the masked virtual communication protocol is further analyzed under internal honest-but-curious and external passive eavesdropper models. Finally, simulation results on a multiple damped oscillator system are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Note to Practitioners—In real-world MASs, physical-layer uncertainties and information-layer challenges often coexist. Actuator faults and external disturbances may degrade the local dynamics, while Markov switching topologies, DoS attacks, passive eavesdropping threats, and limited communication resources may affect inter-agent coordination. These factors require distributed control schemes that can jointly address secure communication, privacy protection, and FT tracking. This paper proposes a hierarchical distributed framework for MASs under Markov switching topologies and DoS attacks. A dynamic event-triggered communication strategy is used to reduce unnecessary transmissions, and a masked virtual reference layer is employed to separate network transmissions from the real faulty states and reduce the direct exposure of real-layer information. Meanwhile, an adaptive FT anti-disturbance controller is constructed to compensate for actuator faults and external disturbances. The proposed approach is applicable to distributed automation systems such as robotic networks, autonomous aerial vehicle formations, and intelligent transportation systems, where secure, private, and reliable coordination is required under switching network conditions.