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Giuseppe Fedele ∗
Dipartimento di Elettronica Informatica e Sistemistica,
Università degli Studi della Calabria,
87036, Rende (Cs), Italy
Abstract
In this paper an identification method to estimate the parameters of a first order plus
time delay model is proposed. Such a method directly obtains these parameters using
a new linear regression equation. No iterations in calculation are needed. A simple
true/false criterion to establish if the hypothesis on the process type is correct can be
easily derived. The proposed method shows an acceptable robustness to disturbance
and measurement noise as it is confirmed by several simulated experiments.
Key words: First order plus time delay model, Algebraic identification,
Least-squares method
1 Introduction
A large number of industrial plants is modeled by a first order plus time delay
(FOPTD) transfer function as follows:
K
G(s) = e−Ls . (1)
Ts + 1
The wide use of model (1), especially in PID controller, is due both to its sim-
plicity and its ability to capture the essential dynamics of several industrial
processes [2]. Several identification procedure have been proposed to identify
the parameters K, T and L in model (1). Although the recent literature insists
∗ Tel.: +39-0984-494720; fax: +39-0984-494713.
E-mail address: fedele@si.deis.unical.it (G. Fedele)
The method here proposed is based on new linear regression equations with re-
dundant variables, and uses filtered signals obtained directly from the process
output. The approach uses the algebraic derivative method in the frequency
domain [1,4], yielding exact formulas, when placed in the time domain, for
the unknown parameters: dead time and constant time. Due to use of the
2
process output integrals in the regression equations, the resulting parameter
estimation is very robust in the face of large measurement noise in the output.
Implicit in the method is a criterion to establish the correctness of the hypoth-
esis that the process is adequately represented by the FOPTD model. Another
feature is that a modified area-based method can be derived directly from our
equations. Simulations in noisy environment show the effectiveness of the pro-
posed method. The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, the proposed
method and an optimization procedure to solve the regression equations are
presented. Section 3 gives simulation results on some typical processes. The
last section is devoted to conclusions.
Suppose the given process is under zero initial condition, before a step change
at t = 0 in the process input u(t) is applied. If the step amplitude is U0 then
the output of process (1) satisfies the equation
Eq. (2) is differentiated one time with respect to the complex frequency s, and
the result is divided by L to obtain:
" #
1 dY (s)
(2T s + 1)Y (s) + (T s2 + s) = −KU0 e−Ls . (3)
L ds
To eliminate the term KU0 e−Ls eq. (2) and (3) are combined together:
dY (s)
(T s2 + s)LY (s) + (2T s + 1)Y (s) + (T s2 + s) = 0. (4)
ds
The division by s2 allows to eliminate all the derivations implicit in the mul-
tiplication by power of s:
h i
dY (s)
T 2s−1 Y (s) + ds
+ Ls−1 Y (s) + LT Y (s) = −s−2 Y (s) − s−1 dYds(s) . (5)
When the inverse Laplace transform is applied to eq. (5), one has
3
where
Rt
f1 (t) = 2 y(σ)dσ − ty(t),
0
Rt
f2 (t) = y(σ)dσ,
0 (7)
f3 (t) = y(t),
Rt Rσ Rt
f4 (t) = − y(λ)dλdσ + σy(σ)dσ.
0 0 0
and θ = LT .
Note that fi (t), i = 1, ..., 4 can be regarded as the outputs of a system whose
Simulink diagram is shown in Fig. 1.
The linear equations (6) and (7) allow us to determine the unknown process
parameters T and L and the value of an auxiliary variable θ. Assume that
fi (t), i = 1, ..., 4 are measured at times 0, Ts , ..., (n − 1)Ts , where Ts is the
sampling period and n is the number of samples, and let define
x = [T L θ]T , (8)
f1 (0) f2 (0) f3 (0)
f1 (Ts ) f2 (Ts ) f3 (Ts )
Ψ=
.. .. ..
,
(9)
. . .
f1 ((n − 1)Ts ) f2 ((n − 1)Ts ) f3 ((n − 1)Ts )
and
f4 (0)
f4 (Ts )
γ=
..
,
(10)
.
f4 ((n − 1)Ts )
then eq. (6) implies
Ψx = γ. (11)
4
When real process data are used to build Ψ and γ with n 3, eq. (11) has
no solution, and an estimate x̂ of the parameters is obtained by least-squares
as −1
x̂ = ΨT Ψ ΨT γ. (12)
The parameter K can be estimated by eq. (14), with y(t) given by the process
output, as
Rτ
y(t)dt
0
K̂ = τ −L
, τ > L, (15)
U0 τ − L − T + T e− T
Remark 1 Eqs. (5) and (6) remain valid also by using a filtered version of
the signals fi (t), i = 1, ..., 4. Such an idea is used in [1] to estimate the time
delay along with other model parameters in an iterative way from an infor-
mative data set. In this paper we use an integrator as filter, because it allows
to introduce at least an integral effect on each term which contains the signal
y(t), i.e. the corrupting high-frequency noises on the signal are attenuated.
5
Remark 2 High frequency zero mean disturbances on the process output are
filtered by the integration operations, so that their contribution to fi (t), i =
1, ..., 4 is negligible. Low-frequency noise and offset errors could cause estima-
tion errors to the proposed method. This is a common problem to any identi-
fication method using step tests. The test signal should enable us to inject as
much energy as possible, or a high signal-to-noise ratio is required [9]. This im-
plies that offsets should be small. If there exist inherent offsets, they may cause
significant estimation error in K, which further leads to estimation errors in
the other parameters.
Remark 3 If the aim is to have a criterion for the consistency of the data
with the model, then it is not necessary to know the response amplitude in
advance.
ef2 (T̂ar )
T∗ = , (18)
U0 K̂
L∗ = T̂ar − T ∗ . (19)
3 Simulation examples
6
where y(kTs ) is the actual process output under a step change, while ŷ(kTs )
is the response of the estimated process under the same step change. The
frequency-domain identification error is measured by the worst-case error:
Ĝ(iω) − G(iω)
2 = max × 100, (21)
ω∈[0,ωu ] |G(iω)|
for frequencies from zero to the ultimate frequency of the real process, ωu .
The results of the proposed method (EF) are compared to those obtained by
the area method (AM) (in the noise-free cases) and the method in [3], (BI).
In all experiments we will use n = 10000 samples with an observation time
equal to Tobs = 10s, 80s, 30s, 30s for the four considered systems, respectively.
1 −s
G(s) = e .
s+1
A unit step is performed, and the process output in the step response is
recorded from t = 0 to t = 10s. In the noise-free case, the model estimated
with the proposed method is
1.0000
ĜEF = e−1.0000s .
1.0000s + 1
1.0000
ĜBI = e−1.0010s ,
1.0000s + 1
with 1 = 4.99e − 08 and 2 = 0.2029%.
Tests are also performed on other processes with different dynamics and the
results are summarized in Table 1. To show the robustness of the proposed
method the step tests are performed adding to the plant output a discrete
zero mean white noise with several value of the signal-to-noise ratio
v
u n−1
2
u i=0 y(iTc )
uP
u
SN R = u n−1
u . (22)
t P 2
r(iTc )
i=0
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Example 2. Consider a 2nd-order plus dead-time process
e−4s
G(s) = .
(10s + 1)(2s + 1)
4 Conclusions
In this paper a method to identify first-order plus time-delay has been pre-
sented. It is based on a linear regression equation which involves only the
time constant and the delay. Noise sensitivity is avoided by filtered equations
based on integrations and convolutions operations of the output signal dur-
ing the observation time. The method does not require complex numerical
calculations.
References
[1] S. Ahmed, B. Huang and S.L. Shah, “Parameter and delay estimation of
continuous-time models using a linear filter”. Journal of Process Control, 16,
pp. 323–331, 2006.
[2] K. J. Aström and T. Hägglund, PID controllers: theory, design and tuning (2nd
ed.). NC, USA: Instrument Society of America, 1995.
8
[6] S. Vivek and M. Chidambaram, “Identification using single symmetrical relay
feedback test”. Comp. & Chemical Eng., 29, pp. 1625–1630, 2005.
[10] T. Soderstrom and P.G. Stoica, System identification. New York: Prentice-Hall,
1989.
[11] T. Soderstrom and P.G. Stoica, Instrumental variable methods for system
identification. Berlin: Springer,1983.
9
e−s e−4s 1−s 1
G(s) s+1 (10s+1)(2s+1) (s+1)5 (s+1)8
1.0000 −1.0000s 1.0015 −5.6474s 1.0010 −3.9232s 1.0110 −4.7421s
EF Ĝ(s) 1.0000s+1 e 10.4495s+1 e 2.1005s+1 e 3.5007s+1 e
10
e−s e−4s 1−s 1
G(s) s+1 (10s+1)(2s+1) (s+1)5 (s+1)8
0.9999 −0.9997s 1.0014 −5.6667s 1.0008 −3.9311s 1.0111 −4.7335s
EF Ĝ(s) 1.0030s+1 e 10.4313s+1 e 2.0973s+1 e 3.5071s+1 e
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