UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE

SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION & PARAMETER ESTIMATION

RE-ASSIGNMENT
Navaneeth Balamuralidhar
S2070707

Introduction
In this assignment, the aim is to identify with maximum accuracy, the longitudinal dynamics
of a fixed-wing aircraft. Usually an aircraft is modelled as a MIMO system but the roll and
yaw dynamics can be decoupled from the pitch dynamics which makes it easy to model the
longitudinal dynamics as a SISO system. Further, the system tends to be fairly linear when
the flight is within the flight envelope. Unless the data comes from an acrobatic aircraft doing
loops, then a good and linearized model can be obtained.

Data Acquisition
The data required to identify the system was obtained from a flight simulation software called
X-Plane 10 which is known for its ultra-realistic simulation performance. The aircraft flown
was a Cessna 172SP. This was chosen because of the relatively simple mechanical controls of
the aircraft which makes sure it is an open-loop system without autopilot or stabilizing
feedback which defeats the purpose of identification in this case. The input is the yoke
position of the pilot which is normalized from -1 to 1 and the output is the angular velocity of
the pitching motion. The data is sampled at 10 Hz which is the standards data logging rate of
an aircraft Flight Data Recorder.
The inputs that excite all the dynamic modes of an aircraft would require a frequency sweep
nature. That is, sinusoidal input of constant amplitude and linearly increasing frequency.
However, such generated inputs cannot be given to the software, hence, we use a mothod
suggested by [1], called “3-2-1-1” input sequence which divides the input set into alternating
positive and negative commands for the duration in the ratio of 3:2:1:1.
For example, we give 0.2 deflection positive, we sustain it for 3 seconds, then bring the yoke
down to -0.2 and sustain it for 2 seconds and back to 0.2 for 1 second and again -0.2 for 1
second. This gives an approximate impression of a frequency sweep.
This input series should excite higher levels of short period and phugoid dynamics better than
a white noise input.
Fig.1 shows the complete input sequence used for identification and its corresponding output.
 Figure 1. The normalized input commanded and its corresponding pitch response

Data Analysis
As mentioned earlier, the input provided to the system are not completely stochastic but
patterns of the ‘3-2-1-1’ input sequences. However, the non-stochastic behavior can be
observed in Fourier transform of the input and it’s auto-correlation. Fig 2. shows that apart
from the central peak at 0, there are two other peaks bounding the central one in the negative
direction. Fig 3. shows a roughly flat spectrum until 0.5 Hz but the slope changes there on.
Figure 2. Auto-correlation plot of the input u
 Figure 3. Fourier transform of the input u

Figure 4. Fourier transform of the response y

Fig.4 shows the Fourier transform of the output y which should be similar to the amplitude
frequency response function if the input is white but we have concluded that the input series
is not white. However, the trend could be similar to the Fourier transform which is seen
further.
Any presence of noise in the data are mostly contributed by wind-model of the simulator
which results in external forces playing a role in the dynamic response. However, no high
frequency noise is present in the data due to the absence of any sensor noise model in the
simulator.

Non-Parametric Identification
Non-Parametric identification methods are use to predict an initial estimate of the system
with which the basic characteristics like the approximate order and the behavior of the system
can be observed. The first step in the Non-Parametric Identification is the estimation of the
impulse response. The estimation was done using the MATLAB function cra(). Fig 5(a)
shows the estimated impulse response lasting 40 seconds. It shows a good decay behavior
which is expected of an aircraft’s longitudinal dynamics, which is inherently overdamped to
avoid unstable behavior. Though the output settles within the bounds, it does not completely
die out. This is probably because white noise input does not induce any extra dynamic
behavior in an aircraft that was not already induced with the ‘3-2-1-1’input which is apparent
when comparing the pre-whitened impulse response with the one without pre-whitening
(Fig.5b). We can observe both the behaviors to be similar.
Once the impulse response is calculated, the model order can be determined using the
Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). Fig.6 shows that estimation of order could be harder
as there is no clear non-zero minimum. If we consider 0.1 as approximately zero, we could
estimate the order to be 3 but however, orders 5 and 7 also could give reasonable estimates.
Order of 7 is chosen as our initial estimate which can be reduced by observing potential pole-
zero cancellations.
A state-space model is estimated from an approximate Hankel matrix using Ho-Kalmann
algorithm.

Fig.5a Pre-whitened Impulse response estimate using cra()

Figure 5b. Impulse response estimate using cra()
 Figure 6. SVDs of the generated Hankel matrix

Parametric Identification
For parametric identification, the System Identification toolbox of MATLAB is used. The
initial estimate (i.e the state space model) is loaded onto the toolbox for comparison. First,
the ARX model is estimated using the “order-selection” option. Fig.7(a) shows that the
suggested number of parameters required to estimate the system is 40 which appears to be too
much.

Figure 7(a). Order selection of the ARX estimation

Also, suggested models are far apart which could mean that having a validation dataset could
improve the order estimation.
Using 20% of the original dataset as the validation data, we get variances as shown in
Fig.7(b).
 Fig.7(b) Order selection of the ARX estimation with validation dataset

With the validation split, we can see that the suggested number of parameters is 6 and the
model is ARX151. We also check the performance of models ARX141 and ARX251.
It can be concluded from Figures 8,9 and 10 that all the three models perform fairly similarly
as the broad resonance peak is prominent in all of the models’ frequency responses and the
step response and error spectrum show minimal variances.
As all the three show similar performance, the model with lowest number of parameters can
be chosen(i.e ARX 141). Further reduction of parameters saw degradation of performance.
Figure 8. Frequency response of ARX151 with respect ARX models with lower and higher
number of parameters

Fig 9. Step Response of the ARX models

Fig.10 Noise power spectrum of the ARX models

Further comparison of the ARX141 model with corresponding 2nd order OE models and a 3rd
order OE model was done. The step response (Fig.11)shows that the ARX model describes a
highly damped system that not only has no overshoots but slope of the graph tapers out as it
reaches the setpoint which is not observed in aircrafts. The other second order OE systems
show a similar high damping behavior but which is observed in real aircraft dynamics.
The OE331 shows a good realistic damping behavior with minimal overshoot.

Fig.11 Step response comparison of ARX model with other OE models

Fig 12. Frequency response comparison

Comparison of the frequency response (Fig 12) shows similar behavior of all the models
between 1 and 10Hz. The OE331 has a broad trough at around 20Hz which may indicate
underfitting but this is not of great concern as the model cannot fit accurately if the frequency
is above the sample frequency.

Parametric vs Non-Parametric Identification

The comparison of the frequency response(Fig.13) of the 2nd and 3rd order OE models with
state-space model identified using Non-parametric method shows that the state-space model
G0 has its resonance peak at 7 Hz while the OE models have it at 10 Hz.

Fig.13 Frequency response comparison between parametric and non-parametric models

Fig.14 Step response comparison between parametric and non-parametric models

The validity of the model can be determined by the step response plot which in this case
shows the non-parametric model with unexpected step response behavior. The response
shows oscillatory pitch rate that has no physical explanation. In addition to this, the pole-zero
map (Fig.15) shows 5 different possible pole-zero cancellation thereby reducing the order to
2. Which is the same order that was estimated for the system using the parametric method.
 Fig. 15 Pole-zero map comparison between parametric and non-parametric models

Finally, we can compare the fit of the model output to the actual output. The OE511 gives the
best fit while the non-parametric model gives the lowest among the four compared.

Conclusion
As we do not have any actual flight model with which we can compare the models with, we
have to make the choice between the three OE models namely OE411, OE511 and OE331.
Third order model would be a good approximation as analytical methods like in [2] often use
a 2nd order model for analysis with good accuracy. The additional order in the identified
system could belong to the additional disturbance due to wind that interferes with the
dynamics. Thus OE331 looks to be the model that models the dynamic behavior the best for
Cessna 172SP.

References
[1] Tischler, Mark B., and Robert K. Remple. "Aircraft and rotorcraft system
identification." AIAA education series (2006): 72.
[2] Cadwell Jr, John Andres. "Control of longitudinal pitch rate as aircraft center of gravity
changes." (2010), Pages 15-16.