Distributed State Estimation Over Sensor Networks Under Push-Based Gossip Protocol: A Token Bucket Strategy

This paper investigates the distributed state estimation problem for nonlinear time-varying systems over sensor networks governed by gossip-based token bucket protocols. To address this issue, an easy-to-implement framework is developed for the push-based gossip protocol, where each node randomly selects a subset of neighbors for information exchange. Furthermore, a token bucket protocol is employed, where a sensor can transmit information to its selected neighbors only if the tokens stored in the bucket are sufficient to meet the transmission requirement. Specifically, the token consumption is determined by the number of neighbors randomly selected under the gossip protocol. The primary objective is to construct state estimators capable of minimizing the upper bounds on the estimation error covariance matrices by determining appropriate gains at each time step. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is illustrated through two simulation examples.