Abstract
The paper studies the convergence properties of the estimation error processes in distributed Kalman filtering for potentially unstable linear dynamical systems. In particular, it is shown that, in a weakly connected communication network, there exist (randomized) gossip based information dissemination schemes leading to a stochastically bounded estimation error at each sensor for any non-zero rate γ̄ of inter-sensor communication (the rate γ̄ is defined to be the average number of inter-sensor communications per signal evolution epoch). A gossip-based information exchange protocol, the M-GIKF, is presented, in which sensors exchange estimates and aggregate observations at a rate γ̄ > 0, leading to desired convergence properties. Under the assumption of global (centralized) detectability of the signal/observation model (necessary for a centralized estimator having access to all sensor observations at all times to yield bounded estimation error), it is shown that the distributed M-GIKF leads to a stochastically bounded estimation error at each sensor. The conditional estimation error covariance sequence at each sensor is shown to evolve as a random Riccati equation (RRE) with Markov modulated switching. The RRE is analyzed through a random dynamical system (RDS) formulation, and the asymptotic estimation error at each sensor is characterized in terms of an associated invariant measure µγ̄ of the RDS.