On the Structural and Strong Structural Controllability of Undirected Networks

Characterization of network controllability through its topology has recently gained a lot of attention in the systems and control community. Using the notion of balancing sets, in this note, such a network-centric approach for the controllability of certain families of undirected networks is investigated. Moreover, by introducing the notion of a generalized zero forcing set, the structural controllability of undirected networks is discussed; in this direction, lower bounds on the dimension of the controllable sub-space are derived. In addition, a method is proposed that facilitates synthesis of structural and strong structural controllable networks as well as examining preservation of network controllability under structural perturbations.