Aas 15-341 Bilinear System Identification by Minimal-order State Observers

Bilinear systems offer a promising approach for nonlinear control because a broad class of nonlinear problems can be reformulated and approximated in bilinear form. System identification is a technique to obtain such a bilinear approximation for a nonlinear system from input-output data. Recent discrete-time bilinear model identification methods rely on Input-Output-to-State Representations (IOSRs) derived via the interaction matrix technique. A new formulation of these methods is given by establishing a correspondence between interaction matrices and the gains of full-order bilinear state observers. The new interpretation of the identification methods highlights the possibility of utilizing minimal-order bilinear state observers to derive new IOSRs. The existence of such observers is discussed and shown to be guaranteed for special classes of bilinear systems. New bilinear system identification algorithms are developed and the corresponding computational advantages are illustrated via numerical examples.