330 research outputs found
Opinion Dynamics in Heterogeneous Networks: Convergence Conjectures and Theorems
Recently, significant attention has been dedicated to the models of opinion
dynamics in which opinions are described by real numbers, and agents update
their opinions synchronously by averaging their neighbors' opinions. The
neighbors of each agent can be defined as either (1) those agents whose
opinions are in its "confidence range," or (2) those agents whose "influence
range" contain the agent's opinion. The former definition is employed in
Hegselmann and Krause's bounded confidence model, and the latter is novel here.
As the confidence and influence ranges are distinct for each agent, the
heterogeneous state-dependent interconnection topology leads to a
poorly-understood complex dynamic behavior. In both models, we classify the
agents via their interconnection topology and, accordingly, compute the
equilibria of the system. Then, we define a positive invariant set centered at
each equilibrium opinion vector. We show that if a trajectory enters one such
set, then it converges to a steady state with constant interconnection
topology. This result gives us a novel sufficient condition for both models to
establish convergence, and is consistent with our conjecture that all
trajectories of the bounded confidence and influence models eventually converge
to a steady state under fixed topology.Comment: 22 pages, Submitted to SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization
(SICON
Asymptotic Consensus Without Self-Confidence
This paper studies asymptotic consensus in systems in which agents do not
necessarily have self-confidence, i.e., may disregard their own value during
execution of the update rule. We show that the prevalent hypothesis of
self-confidence in many convergence results can be replaced by the existence of
aperiodic cores. These are stable aperiodic subgraphs, which allow to virtually
store information about an agent's value distributedly in the network. Our
results are applicable to systems with message delays and memory loss.Comment: 13 page
Dynamics over Signed Networks
A signed network is a network with each link associated with a positive or
negative sign. Models for nodes interacting over such signed networks, where
two different types of interactions take place along the positive and negative
links, respectively, arise from various biological, social, political, and
economic systems. As modifications to the conventional DeGroot dynamics for
positive links, two basic types of negative interactions along negative links,
namely the opposing rule and the repelling rule, have been proposed and studied
in the literature. This paper reviews a few fundamental convergence results for
such dynamics over deterministic or random signed networks under a unified
algebraic-graphical method. We show that a systematic tool of studying node
state evolution over signed networks can be obtained utilizing generalized
Perron-Frobenius theory, graph theory, and elementary algebraic recursions.Comment: In press, SIAM Revie
Distributed Bayesian Filtering using Logarithmic Opinion Pool for Dynamic Sensor Networks
The discrete-time Distributed Bayesian Filtering (DBF) algorithm is presented
for the problem of tracking a target dynamic model using a time-varying network
of heterogeneous sensing agents. In the DBF algorithm, the sensing agents
combine their normalized likelihood functions in a distributed manner using the
logarithmic opinion pool and the dynamic average consensus algorithm. We show
that each agent's estimated likelihood function globally exponentially
converges to an error ball centered on the joint likelihood function of the
centralized multi-sensor Bayesian filtering algorithm. We rigorously
characterize the convergence, stability, and robustness properties of the DBF
algorithm. Moreover, we provide an explicit bound on the time step size of the
DBF algorithm that depends on the time-scale of the target dynamics, the
desired convergence error bound, and the modeling and communication error
bounds. Furthermore, the DBF algorithm for linear-Gaussian models is cast into
a modified form of the Kalman information filter. The performance and robust
properties of the DBF algorithm are validated using numerical simulations
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