Brief Paper - Sieve method for consensus-type network tomography

In this note, the authors examine the problem of identifying the interaction geometry among a known number of agents, adopting a consensus-type algorithm for their coordination. The proposed identification process is facilitated by introducing `ports` for stimulating a subset of network vertices via an appropriately defined interface and observing the network`s response at another set of vertices. It is first noted that under the assumption of controllability and observability of corresponding steered-and-observed network, the proposed procedure identifies a number of important features of the network using the spectrum of the graph Laplacian. The authors then proceed to use degree-based graph reconstruction methods to propose a sieve method for further characterisation of the underlying network. An example demonstrates the application of the proposed method.