An approach to distributed estimation of time-varying signals by multi-agent systems

In this paper, a novel distributed estimation scheme for multi-agent systems is devised, where each agent communicates only with a subset of neighbouring mates. It is assumed that a given time-varying signal is measured or computed by only a subset of agents, named sources, while the other agents, the users, are required to estimate this signal in a distributed fashion. To the purpose, each user agent runs an estimator of the signal and its derivatives up to a given order, based on a dynamic consensus scheme. Stability and performance are analyzed, simulations are run to show the effectiveness of the approach and assess its performance.