Consensus averaging
From Glossary of Meteorology
consensus averaging
A method used to estimate the true value of a quantity with measured or observed values that have statistical fluctuations and outliers that are presumed to be due to measurement error, extraneous signals, or noise.
The consensus averaging technique examines the set of all measured values and finds the largest subset with values within a predetermined interval of each other. If that subset has fewer than a predetermined number of values, then the entire set of measurements is rejected; otherwise, the selected subset is averaged to obtain an estimate of the true value of the measured quantity. For this technique to be valid, the true value must not change greatly during the time period over which the measurements are taken. Consensus averaging has been used in wind profiling to determine an estimate of the wind velocity from several measurements of the Doppler shift of the radar signal, which is often dominated by noise and contaminated by interfering radio signals, airplanes, birds, etc.
