Distributed Decision Through Self-Synchronizing Sensor Networks in the Presence of Propagation Delays and Nonreciprocal Channels
<|reference_start|>Distributed Decision Through Self-Synchronizing Sensor Networks in the Presence of Propagation Delays and Nonreciprocal Channels: In this paper we propose and analyze a distributed algorithm for achieving globally optimal decisions, either estimation or detection, through a self-synchronization mechanism among linearly coupled integrators initialized with local measurements. We model the interaction among the nodes as a directed graph with weights dependent on the radio interface and we pose special attention to the effect of the propagation delays occurring in the exchange of data among sensors, as a function of the network geometry. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the proposed system to reach a consensus on globally optimal decision statistics. One of the major results proved in this work is that a consensus is achieved for any bounded delay condition if and only if the directed graph is quasi-strongly connected. We also provide a closed form expression for the global consensus, showing that the effect of delays is, in general, to introduce a bias in the final decision. The closed form expression is also useful to modify the consensus mechanism in order to get rid of the bias with minimum extra complexity.<|reference_end|>
@article{scutari2007distributed,
    title={Distributed Decision Through Self-Synchronizing Sensor Networks in the
  Presence of Propagation Delays and Nonreciprocal Channels},
    author={Gesualdo Scutari, Sergio Barbarossa and Loreto Pescosolido},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0702068},
    year={2007},
    doi={10.1109/SPAWC.2007.4401363},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={cs/0702068},
    primaryClass={cs.IT cs.MA math.IT}
}