Distributed averaging on digital erasure networks

Ruggero Carli (1) , Giacomo Como (2) , Paolo Frasca (3) , Federica Garin (4)

1 DEI - Dipartimento di Ingegneria de l'Informazione [Padova]
2 LIDS - Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3 Dipartimento di Scienze Matematiche
4 NECS - Networked Controlled Systems

Iterative distributed algorithms are studied for computing arithmetic averages over networks of agents connected through memoryless broadcast erasure channels. These algorithms do not require the agents to have any knowledge about the global network structure or size. Almost sure convergence to state agreement is proved, and the communication and computational complexities of the algorithms are analyzed. Both the number of transmissions and the number of computations performed by each agent of the network are shown to grow not faster than poly-logarithmically in the desired precision. The impact of the graph topology on the algorithms' performance is analyzed as well. Moreover, it is shown how, in the presence of noiseless communication feedback, one can modify the algorithms, significantly improving their performance versus complexity trade-off.

Domains: Automatic Control Engineering; Multiagent Systems [cs.MA]; Information Theory [cs.IT]; Information Theory [math.IT]

Ruggero Carli, Giacomo Como, Paolo Frasca, Federica Garin. Distributed averaging on digital erasure networks. Automatica, 2011, 47 (1), pp.115-121. ⟨10.1016/j.automatica.2010.10.015⟩. ⟨inria-00541039⟩