Communication delays and data losses in distributed adaptive high‐gain EKF

In this work, we consider distributed adaptive high‐gain extended Kalman filtering for nonlinear systems subject to data losses and delays in communications. Specifically, we consider a class of nonlinear systems that consist of several subsystems interacting with each other via their states. A local adaptive high‐gain extended Kalman filter is designed for each subsystem and the distributed estimators communicate to exchange the information. Each subsystem estimator takes the advantage of a predictor accounting for the delays and data losses simultaneously. The predictor of each subsystem is used to generate state predictions of interacting subsystems for interaction compensation. To get a reliable prediction, the predictors are designed based on a prediction‐update algorithm. The convergence of the proposed distributed state estimation is ensured under sufficient conditions handling communication delays and data losses. Finally, a chemical process example is used to evaluate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed design. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 62: 4321–4333, 2016