Distributed Observer for A Non-autonomous Leader over Jointly Connected Switching Networks

In this article, we first establish an asymptotic stability result for a class of linear switched systems, and then apply the result to show the existence of the distributed observer for a non-autonomous leader system with a constant input over jointly connected and undirected switching networks, provided that each follower is reachable from the leader in each sufficiently small time period. The distributed observer can estimate not only the state of the leader but also its input, without knowing the leader's input. An illustrative example is provided to verify our design.