An Introduction to Identification

Advanced undergraduates and graduate students of electrical, chemical, mechanical, and environmental engineering will appreciate this text for a course in systems identification. In addition to the theoretical basis for mathematical modeling, it covers a variety of tried-and-true identification algorithms and their applications. Moreover, its broad view and fairly modest mathematical level offer readers a quick appraisal of established methods and their limitations. In addition to surveys covering classical methods of identification — including impulse, step, and sine-wave testing — and identification based on correlation function, the text examines least-squares model fitting, statistical properties of estimators, optimal estimation, and Bayes and maximum-likelihood estimators. Other topics include experiment design and choice of model structure as well as model validation. Numerical examples show students how to apply the modeling theories, and a chapter on specialized topics introduces research areas.