On the design of multiplex control to reject disturbances in nonlinear network systems affected by heterogeneous delays

We consider the problem of designing control protocols for nonlinear network systems affected by heterogeneous, time-varying delays and disturbances. For these networks, the goal is to reject polynomial disturbances affecting the agents and to guarantee the fulfilment of some desired network behaviour. To satisfy these requirements, we propose an integral control design implemented via a multiplex architecture. We give sufficient conditions for the desired disturbance rejection and stability properties by leveraging tools from contraction theory. We illustrate the effectiveness of the results via a numerical example that involves the control of a multi-terminal high-voltage DC grid.