Perspectives on errors-in-variables estimation for dynamic systems

Abstract

The paper gives an overview of various methods for identifying dynamic errors-in-variables systems. Several approaches are classified by how the original information in time-series data of the noisy input and output measurements is condensed before further processing. For some methods, such as instrumental variable estimators, the information is condensed into a nonsymmetric covariance matrix as a first step before further processing. In a second class of methods, where a symmetric covariance matrix is used instead, the Frisch scheme and other bias-compensation approaches appear. When dealing with the estimation problem in the frequency domain, a milder data reduction typically takes place by first computing spectral estimators of the noisy input–output data. Finally, it is also possible to apply maximum likelihood and prediction error approaches using the original time-domain data in a direct fashion. This alternative will often require quite high computational complexity but yield good statistical efficiency. The paper is also presenting various properties of parameter estimators for the errors-in-variables problem, and a few conjectures are included, as well as some perspectives and experiences by the authors.