SummaryThis paper is concerned with the filtering problem for discrete‐time networked systems with communication constraints, fading measurements, and multiplicative noises. The communication constraint is that, at each sampling instant, at most one of the various transmission nodes in the networked systems is permitted to access a shared communication channel, and then the received data are transmitted to a remote filter to perform the filtering task. The phenomenon of measurement fading appears in a random way when measurements are transmitted via the communication channel that undergoes slow fading. Using the innovation analysis approach and some results developed in this study, an optimal linear filter is proposed. The proposed optimal filter has a recursive structure and does not increase computation and storage load with time. Computer simulations are conducted to examine the performance of the proposed optimal filter. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.