An overview on the designs of distributed observers in LTI multi-agent systems

With the rapid development of information technologies and cloud computing, sensor networks play an increasingly important role in our society. Over the past few decades, distributed observer theory has attracted unprecedented attention due to its wide potential applications in different areas. Meanwhile, various approaches and algorithms have been proposed and investigated. The design of distributed observers is one of the frontier topics of system and control research, which has the significant theoretical values and broad application prospects. This paper attempts to review the representative models and the corresponding approaches for distributed observer design in linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. Firstly, the research backgrounds and main advances of distributed observer designs are briefly reviewed. Then, recent results of distributed observer designs for discrete-time and continuous-time LTI multi-agent systems (MASs) are introduced in detail, respectively. Finally, the prospects and the future work directions of the design of distributed observers are put forward. The main purpose of this paper is to promote the emerging topic on the designs of distributed observers, with focuses on the interdisciplinary interest from technological sciences.