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A control‐theoretic perspective on the design of distributed agreement protocols
Author(s) -
Roy Sandip,
Saberi Ali,
Herlugson Kristin
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
international journal of robust and nonlinear control
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1099-1239
pISSN - 1049-8923
DOI - 10.1002/rnc.1148
Subject(s) - computer science , protocol (science) , perspective (graphical) , agreement , markov chain , integrator , network topology , a priori and a posteriori , consistency (knowledge bases) , control (management) , topology (electrical circuits) , mathematics , artificial intelligence , machine learning , computer network , linguistics , philosophy , alternative medicine , bandwidth (computing) , pathology , epistemology , combinatorics , medicine
We present a control‐theoretic perspective on the design of distributed agreement protocols. First, we explore agreement‐protocol analysis and design for a network of agents with single‐integrator dynamics and arbitrary linear observations. One key contribution of our work is the analysis of protocols for networks with quite general observation topologies, including with multiple observations made by each agent. Another contribution is the development of techniques for agreement law design—i.e. for assignment of the dependence of the agreed‐upon value on the initial states of the agents. Second, we explore agreement in a quasi‐linear model with a stochastic protocol, which we call the controlled voter model. We motivate our study of this model, develop tests for whether agreement is achieved, and consider design of the agreement law. Third, we expose one application of agreement law design, to distributed maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) decision making and hidden Markov model (HMM) estimation. Finally, we provide some further thoughts regarding our control‐theoretic perspective on agreement, including ideas for fault‐tolerant protocol design using our approach. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.