Stability of monotone dynamical flow networks
Abstract
We study stability properties of monotone dynamical flow networks. Demand and supply functions relate states and flows of the network, and the dynamics at junctions are subject to fixed turning rates. Our main result consists in the characterization of a stability region such that: If the inflow vector in the network lies strictly inside the stability region and a certain graph theoretical condition is satisfied, then a globally asymptotically stable equilibrium exists. In contrast, if the inflow vector lies strictly outside the region, then every trajectory grows unbounded in time. As a special case, our framework allows for the stability analysis of the Cell Transmission Model on networks with arbitrary topologies. These results extend and unify previous work by Gomes et al. on stability of the Cell Transmission Model on a line topology as well as that by the authors on throughput optimality in monotone dynamical flow networks.