Distributed consensus over digital noisy channel through reliable communications

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation of the distributed consensus problem of multi-agent systems over a digital noisy channel. In digital networks, noise in the digital channel may significantly affect the consensus of a multi-agent system. To overcome the uncertainty of a binary erasure channel, dynamic reliable communication schemes are adopted to ensure that the real-valued random signal is transmitted up to the expected precision. We proposed consensus protocols, under which the quantizer is not saturated and the system is proved to reach consensus if an appropriate communication time is chosen. The complexity of communication is analyzed and a numerical comparison between reliable communication and quantized communication is presented.