Optimal model order reduction with the Steiglitz-McBride method for open-loop data

In system identification, it is often difficult to find a physical intuition to choose a noise model structure. The importance of this choice is that, for the prediction error method (PEM) to provide asymptotically efficient estimates, the model orders must be chosen according to the true system. However, if only the plant estimates are of interest and the experiment is performed in open loop, the noise model may be over-parameterized without affecting the asymptotic properties of the plant. The limitation is that, as PEM suffers in general from non-convexity, estimating an unnecessarily large number of parameters will increase the chances of getting trapped in local minima. To avoid this, a high order ARX model can first be estimated by least squares, providing non-parametric estimates of the plant and noise model. Then, model order reduction can be used to obtain a parametric model of the plant only. We review existing methods to perform this, pointing out limitations and connections between them. Then, we propose a method that connects favorable properties from the previously reviewed approaches. We show that the proposed method provides asymptotically efficient estimates of the plant with open loop data. Finally, we perform a simulation study, which suggests that the proposed method is competitive with PEM and other similar methods.