Asymptotically Stable Filter for MVU Estimation of States and Homologous Unknown Inputs in Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems

This study addresses the problem of the estimation of state when heterogeneous multiagent systems are affected by homologous unknown inputs (UIs). Homologous UIs refer to identical UIs affecting different agents. An improved semidistributed filter based on previous research is proposed. The improved filter uses neighbors’ information for UI estimation but not state estimation. A necessary and sufficient condition for the proposed filter to achieve minimum-variance unbiased estimation is presented and proven. Moreover, the asymptotic stability of the filter is analyzed. A sufficient condition of the asymptotic stability is presented and proven. The theoretical and numerical analyses indicate that the proposed filter has less communication pressure, fewer calculation requirements, and better estimation performance compared with the existing solutions. Note to Practitioners —In the industry, homologous unknown inputs (UIs) exist in many different systems. For example, the same ambient temperature affects the performance of every battery in a battery pack. Similarly, the same wind power can affect different aircrafts flying in the same region. Temperature and wind power can be considered the homologous UIs of a multiagent system. Estimation of homologous UIs is important because of the latter’s massive impact on the system. In this study, data transmission delay and packet loss are ignored. Hence, the study is limited to low-rate systems. Moreover, nonlinear filters must be studied further in future work.