In this brief paper, a new consensus protocol based on the sign of innovations is proposed. Based on this protocol each agent only requires single-bit of information about its relative state to its neighboring agents. This is significant in real-time applications, since it requires less computation and/or communication load on agents. Using Lyapunov stability theorem the convergence is proved for networks having a spanning tree. Further, the convergence is shown to be in finite-time, which is significant as compared to most asymptotic protocols in the literature. Time-variant network topologies are also considered in this paper, and final consensus value is derived for undirected networks. Applications of the proposed consensus protocol in (i) 2D/3D rendezvous task, (ii) distributed estimation, (iii) distributed optimization, and (iv) formation control are considered and significance of applying this protocol is discussed. Numerical simulations are provided to compare the protocol with the existing protocols in the literature.

中文翻译：

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具有有限时间收敛的单比特共识：理论与应用

在这篇简短的论文中，提出了一种基于创新标志的新共识协议。基于该协议，每个代理只需要关于其与其相邻代理的相对状态的单比特信息。这在实时应用程序中很重要，因为它需要较少的代理计算和/或通信负载。使用李雅普诺夫稳定性定理证明了具有生成树的网络的收敛性。此外，收敛被证明是在有限时间内进行的，与文献中的大多数渐近协议相比，这很重要。本文还考虑了时变网络拓扑结构，并为无向网络推导出最终共识值。所提出的共识协议在 (i) 2D/3D 交会任务，(ii) 分布式估计，(iii) 分布式优化中的应用，(iv) 考虑编队控制并讨论应用该协议的意义。提供了数值模拟以将该协议与文献中的现有协议进行比较。