Coordinated systems interact via the exchange of information through communication. As the network of coordinated systems increases in the number of subsystems, natural limits on the available bandwidth of communication need to be imposed. Without this, the coordinated system does not scale property and the interaction burden becomes unmanageable. Our aim in this paper is to develop estimation techniques for the coordinated systems including the allocation of communication resources. Central ideas involve: interaction via constraints imposed by neighbors, the tightening of these constraints to reflect state uncertainty, and the assignment of communications resources to manage this uncertainty in the estimator design. Linear matrix inequality methods are applied to develop a solution which links control objective, performance, and communication limits. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.