Distributed adaptive moving horizon estimation for multi-sensor networks subject to quantization effects

This paper investigates the distributed state estimation problem for multi-sensor networks with quantized measurements. Within the Bayesian framework, a distributed adaptive moving horizon estimation algorithm is developed. Unlike the existing methods regarding quantized errors roughly as bounded uncertainties, the posterior distributions of the errors are demanded to be derived. To overcome the difficulty of evaluating the posterior distributions for series of the states and quantized errors jointly, the variational Bayesian methodology is adopted to approximate the true distributions. Based on the fixed-point iteration method, the update rules are analytically derived, with the convergence criterion provided. Furthermore, by incorporating the average consensus algorithm into the prediction process, all sensors can achieve consensus on their estimates in a distributed manner. Finally, a numerical example of target tracking under logarithmic and uniform quantization effects is given to illustrate the validity of the proposed algorithm.