This paper investigates state estimation of linear time-invariant systems where the sensors and controllers are geographically separated and connected over limited capacity, additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) communication channels. Such channels are viewed as dropout (erasure) channels. In particular, we consider the case with limited data rates, present a necessary and sufficient condition on the data rate for mean square observability over an AWGN channel. The system is mean square observable if the data rate of the channel is larger than the lower bound given. It is shown in our results that there exist the inherent tradeoffs among the limited data rate, dropout probability, and observability. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.