Distributed fault estimation over sensor networks: A bit rate allocation scheme

This paper investigates the issue of fault estimation (FE) in a distributed way for nonlinear time -varying systems via a digital communication channel. In order to relieve the communication limitation, a bit rate allocation scheme is made using data transmitted from sensors to estimators. Next, distributed estimators are designed in terms of the obtained decoded measurement outputs such that an upper bound of estimation error covariance (EEC) is ensured by resorting to the well-known mathematical induction approach. Moreover, the desired gains of constructed estimators are calculated at each iteration by minimizing the upper bound. Subsequently, a sufficient condition is presented to check the uniform boundedness of the designed recursive approaches of the distributed FE. Moreover, the monotonicity with respect to the bit rate is discussed for the fixed estimator gains. An example of Chua's circuits is finally presented to check the applicability of the developed distributed strategy.