  In this paper, the problem of synthesizing a distributed controller from data
is considered, with the objective to optimize a model-reference control
criterion. We establish an explicit ideal distributed controller that solves
the model-reference control problem for a structured reference model. On the
basis of input-output data collected from the interconnected system, a virtual
experiment setup is constructed which leads to a network identification
problem. We formulate a prediction-error identification criterion that has the
same global optimum as the model-reference criterion, when the controller class
contains the ideal distributed controller. The developed distributed controller
synthesis method is illustrated on an academic example network of nine
subsystems and the influence of the controller interconnection structure on the
achieved closed-loop performance is analyzed.
