Identifiability of dynamic networks with part of the nodes noise-free

In dynamic network identification a major goal is to uniquely identify the topology and dynamic links between the measured node variables. It is common practice to assume that process noises affect every output in multivariable system identification, and every node in dynamic networks with a full rank noise process. For many practical situations this assumption might be overly strong. This leads to the question of how to handle situations where the process noise is not full rank, i.e. when the number of white noise processes driving the network is strictly smaller than the number of nodes. In this paper a first step towards answering this question is taken by addressing the case of a dynamic network where some nodes are noise-free, and others are disturbed with a (correlated) process noise. In this situation the predictor filters that generate the one-step-ahead prediction of the node signals are non-unique, and the appropriate identification criterion leads to a constrained optimization problem. It is assessed when it is possible to distinguish between models on the basis of this criterion, leading to new notions of network identifiability. It appears that a sufficient condition for network identifiability is that every node signal in the network is excited by an external excitation signal or a process noise signal that is uncorrelated with other node excitations

From closed-loop identification to dynamic networks: Generalization of the direct method

Identification methods for identifying (modules in) dynamic cyclic networks, are typically based on the standard methods that are available for identification of dynamic systems in closed-loop. The commonly used direct method for closed-loop prediction error identification is one of the available tools. In this paper we are going to show the consequences when the direct method is used under conditions that are more general than the classical closed-loop case. We will do so by focusing on a simple two-node (feedback) network where we add additional disturbances, excitation signals and sensor noise. The direct method loses consistency when correlated disturbances are present on node signals, or when sensor noises are present. A generalization of the direct method, the joint-direct method, is explored, that is based on a vector predictor and includes a conditioning on external excitation signals. It is shown to be able to cope with the above situations, and to retain consistency of the module estimates

A sequential least squares algorithm for ARMAX dynamic network identification

Identification of dynamic networks in prediction error setting often requires the solution of a non-convex optimization problem, which can be difficult to solve especially for large-scale systems. Focusing on ARMAX models of dynamic networks, we instead employ a method based on a sequence of least-squares steps. For single-input single-output models, we show that the method is equivalent to the recently developed Weighted Null Space Fitting, and, drawing from the analysis of that method, we conjecture that the proposed method is both consistent as well as asymptotically efficient under suitable assumptions. Simulations indicate that the sequential least squares estimates can be of high quality even for short data sets