Optimal Weight Allocation of Dynamic Distribution Networks and Positive Semi-definiteness of Signed Laplacians

In this paper, we consider the robustness of a basic model of a dynamical distribution network. In the first problem, i.e., optimal weight allocation, we minimize the H-inf- norm of the dynamical distribution network subject to allocation of the weights on the edges. It is shown that this optimization problem can be formulated as a semi-definite program. Next we consider the semi-definiteness of the weighted graph Laplacian matrix with negative weights on the edges. A necessary and sufficient condition, using the effective resistance matrix, is established to guarantee the positive semi-definiteness of the Laplacian matrix. Furthermore, the bounded real lemma is derived for state-space symmetric systems.