Block-oriented nonlinear models are popular in nonlinear system identification because of their advantages of being simple to understand and easy to use. Many different identification approaches were developed over the years to estimate the parameters of a wide range of block-oriented nonlinear models. One class of these approaches uses linear approximations to initialize the identification algorithm. The best linear approximation framework and the -approximation framework, or equivalent frameworks, allow the user to extract important information about the system, guide the user in selecting good candidate model structures and orders, and prove to be a good starting point for nonlinear system identification algorithms. This paper gives an overview of the different block-oriented nonlinear models that can be identified using linear approximations, and of the identification algorithms that have been developed in the past. A non-exhaustive overview of the most important other block-oriented nonlinear system identification approaches is also provided throughout this paper.

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In this paper we show that it is possible to retrieve structural information about complex block-oriented nonlinear systems, starting from linear approximations of the nonlinear system around different setpoints. The key idea is to monitor the movements of the poles and zeros of the linearized models and to reduce the number of candidate models on the basis of these observations.Besides the well known open loop single branch Wiener-, Hammerstein-, and Wiener-Hammerstein systems, we also cover a number of more general structures like parallel (multi branch) Wiener-Hammerstein models, and closed loop block oriented models, including linear fractional representation (LFR) models.

a b s t r a c tBlock-oriented nonlinear models are popular in nonlinear modeling because of their advantages to be quite simple to understand and easy to use. To increase the flexibility of single branch block-oriented models, such as Hammerstein, Wiener, and Wiener-Hammerstein models, parallel block-oriented models can be considered. This paper presents a method to identify parallel Wiener-Hammerstein systems starting from input-output data only. In the first step, the best linear approximation is estimated for different input excitation levels. In the second step, the dynamics are decomposed over a number of parallel orthogonal branches. Next, the dynamics of each branch are partitioned into a linear time invariant subsystem at the input and a linear time invariant subsystem at the output. This is repeated for each branch of the model. The static nonlinear part of the model is also estimated during this step. The consistency of the proposed initialization procedure is proven. The method is validated on real-world measurements using a custom built parallel Wiener-Hammerstein test system.

In the last years, the success of kernel-based regularisation techniques in solving impulse response modelling tasks has revived the interest on linear system identification. In this work, an alternative perspective on the same problem is introduced. Instead of relying on a Bayesian framework to include assumptions about the system in the definition of the covariance matrix of the parameters, here the prior knowledge is injected at the cost function level. The key idea is to define the regularisation matrix as a filtering operation on the parameters, which allows for a more intuitive formulation of the problem from an engineering point of view. Moreover, this results in a unified framework to model low-pass, band-pass and high-pass systems, and systems with one or more resonances. The proposed filter-based approach outperforms the existing regularisation method based on the TC and DC kernels, as illustrated by means of Monte Carlo simulations on several linear modelling examples.