On computing parameters to find direction of disturbance propagation using transfer entropy method

The problem of disturbance propagation in industrial process control loops has received considerable attention. Causes of plant-wide disturbances include non-linear limit cycles in control loops, controller interactions and tuning problems. Once oscilattions are detected, knowledge about cause and effect in control loops is fundamental for identifying the root causes. In [1], a method for calculating transfer entropy was proposed using five tuning parameters that were constant in all calculations. In this paper, two of these parameters were computed for each pair of variables, resulting in better conclusions about cause and effect relationships amongst the signals. The usefulness of our proposal is demonstrated through simulations and application to an industrial case.