Workshop on nonlinear system identification

The Spain Chapter of the IEEE Circuits and Systems organized this workshop, which was given by Prof. Johan Schoukens of Vrije Universiteit Brussel. It was held at the Public University of Navarre on 12 December 2019.

ABSTRACT

Nonlinear system identification comes into the picture where linear system identification fails to address the user’s questions. Nonlinear system identification is much more involved than the identification of linear systems. The experiment design is more tedious, the model structure selection is much more involved, and the parameter estimation is more difficult. For that reason, moving from the well-established linear identification tools towards the more advanced nonlinear system identification methods is an important user decision that should be well informed because it significantly affects the cost of the identification process (time, money, experimental resources). Is a nonlinear model needed to reach the required model quality? Is the quality of the data good enough to improve the results of a linear identification approach? How much can be gained if a linear model is replaced by a nonlinear one? These questions will be addressed at the start of the presentation. Next, an overview of the nonlinear system identification process is given, focusing on an intuitive understanding of the problems and the solutions, guiding the user along the wide range of choices to be made in nonlinear system identification. The main ideas will be illustrated on simulations and experiments.

BIO OF THE SPEAKER

Johan Schoukens received the PhD degree in engineering sciences in 1985 from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium. His main research interests include system identification, signal processing, and measurement techniques. He has been a Fellow of IEEE since 1997. He was the recipient of the 2002 Andrew R. Chi Best Paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, the 2002 Society Distinguished Service Award from the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society, and the 2007 Belgian Francqui Chair at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Since 2010, he is a member of Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts. In 2011 he received a Doctor Honoris Causa degree from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Since 2013, he is an honorary professor of the University of Warwick.