Title
Consensus based estimation of anonymous networks size using Bernoulli trials
Abstract
To maintain and organize distributed systems it is necessary to have a certain degree of knowledge of their status like the number of cooperating agents. The estimation of this number, usually referred as the network size, can pose challenging questions when agents' identification information cannot be disclosed, since the exchanged information cannot be associated to who originated it. In this paper we propose a totally distributed network size estimation strategy based on statistical inference concepts that can be applied under anonymity constraints. The scheme is based on the following paradigm: agents locally generate some Bernoulli trials, then distributedly compute averages of these generated data, finally locally compute the Maximum Likelihood estimate of the network size exploiting its probabilistic dependencies with the previously computed averages. In this work we study the statistical properties of this estimation strategy, and show how the probability of returning a wrong evaluation decreases exponentially in the number of locally generated trials. Finally, we discuss how practical implementation issues may affect the estimator, and show that there exists a neat phase transition between insensitivity to numerical errors and uselessness of the results.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/ACC.2012.6314621
American Control Conference
Keywords
Field
DocType
distributed processing,maximum likelihood estimation,multi-agent systems,probability,Bernoulli trials,anonymity constraints,anonymous network size,consensus based estimation,cooperating agents,distributed network size estimation strategy,distributed systems,maximum likelihood estimation,neat phase transition,probabilistic dependency,statistical inference concepts,anonymous networks,consensus,distributed estimation,distributed identification,number of agents,number of nodes,sensor networks,size estimation
Data mining,Bernoulli trial,Computer science,Control theory,Identification (information),Multi-agent system,Theoretical computer science,Statistical inference,Probabilistic logic,Anonymity,Wireless sensor network,Estimator
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
0743-1619 E-ISBN : 978-1-4673-2102-0
978-1-4673-2102-0
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.36
15
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Damiano Varagnolo151.48
Pillonetto Gianluigi287780.84
Luca Schenato3118894.99