Strong Sign Controllability of Diffusively-Coupled Networks

Abstract: This paper presents several conditions to determine strong sign controllability for diffusively-coupled undirected networks. The strong sign controllability is determined by the sign patterns (positive, negative, zero) of the edges. We first provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for strong sign controllability of basic components, such as path, cycle, and tree. Next, we propose a merging process to extend the basic componenets to a larger graph based on the conditions of the strong sign controllability. Furthermore, we develop an algorithm of polynomial complexity to find the minimum number of external input nodes while maintaining the strong sign controllability of a network.