Achieving Robust Average Consensus Over Lossy Wireless Networks

Average consensus over unreliable wireless networks can be impaired by losses. In this paper, we study a novel method to compensate for the lost information, when packet collisions cause transmitter-based random failures. This compensation makes the network converge to the average of the initial states of the network by modifying the weights of the links to accommodate for the topology changes due to packet losses. Additionally, a gain is used to increase the convergence speed, and an analysis of the stability of the network is performed, leading to a criterion to choose such gain to guarantee network stability. For the implementation of the compensation method, we propose a new distributed algorithm, which uses both synchronous and asynchronous mechanisms to achieve consensus and to deal with uncertainty in packet delivery. The theoretical results are then confirmed by simulations.