Construction of plant friendly input excitations for ill-conditioned multivariable process identification

The objective of this work is to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of input excitation signal design methods considering gain directions for the case of ill-conditioned multi-input multi output (MIMO) systems. For this purpose, a four inputs-four outputs (4 × 4) stripper section of distillation column is considered. Different plant friendly indices (such as, crest factor, PIPS) and fit percentage were used to quantify effectiveness of different input excitation signal design methods. Subsequently the quality of these methods and thus the quality of associated input excitation is evaluated through cross validation analysis.