An exception is presented in Star Student Project, where continuous-time observers are coupled with discrete-time estimates. In this case, however, the observers design is centralized, and it relies on global Star Student Project system knowledge. To the best of our knowledge, there is no practically applicable solution to continuous-time distributed observer problem with discrete-time communication. The motivation for continuous-time estimation over an a-priori discretization of the plant is not only the theoretical challenge to fill a gap in the estimation literature, but also the absence of a-priori errors due to sampling and discretization schemes, the applicability to plants with fast dynamics equipped with low bandwidth communication systems (the discretized model requires high sampling rate and high bandwidth communication to accurately capture fast dynamics), and the flexibility of adapting the time resolution (sampling rate) in an event-based fashion.
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