Distributed Covariance Intersection Fusion Estimation for Cyber-Physical Systems With Communication Constraints

This technical note addresses the distributed covariance intersection fusion estimation problem for a class of cyber-physical systems (CPSs), where the raw measurements are preprocessed in each sink node to obtain the local state estimates of a CPS. When each local estimate is transmitted to a remote fusion center (FC), the communication network between the sink node and the FC is subject to finite bandwidth, varying delays and packet dropouts. Based on a new communication constraint model covering all these network phenomena, a recursively distributed fusion estimator (DFE) is designed for the addressed CPSs. Since the estimation performance directly impacts the stability of control operation in CPSs, stability condition is derived such that the mean square error of the designed DFE is bounded, and it is proved that the DFE is independent of the initial values under certain conditions. The design procedure is illustrated using a numerical example.