Average consensus with packet drop communication

Average consensus consists in the problem of determining the average of some quantities by means of a distributed algorithm. It is a simple instance of problems arising when designing estimation algorithms operating on data produced by sensor networks. Simple solutions based on linear estimation algorithms have already been proposed in the literature and their performance has been analyzed in detail. If the communication links which allow the data exchange between the sensors have some loss, then the estimation performance will degrade. In this contribution the performance degradation due to this data loss is evaluated.