Subsystem decomposition and distributed state estimation of nonlinear processes with implicit time‐scale multiplicity

Abstract

In this work, we propose a subsystem decomposition approach and a distributed estimation scheme for a class of implicit two-time-scale nonlinear systems. Taking the advantage of the time scale separation, these processes are decomposed into fast subsystem and slow subsystem according to the dynamics. In the proposed method, an approach that combines the approximate solutions obtained from both the fast and slow subsystems to form a composite solution of the original system is proposed. Also, based on the fast and slow subsystems, a distributed state estimation scheme is proposed to handle the implicit time-scale multiplicity. In the proposed design, an extended Kalman filter (EKF) is designed for the fast subsystem and a moving horizon estimator (MHE) is designed for the slow subsystem. In the design, the slow subsystem is only required to send information to the fast subsystem one-directionally. The fast subsystem estimator does not send out any information. The estimators use different sampling times, that is, fast sampling of the fast state variables is considered in the fast EKF and slow sampling of the slow state variables is considered in the slow MHE. Extensive simulations based on a chemical process are performed to illustrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed subsystem decomposition and composite estimation architecture.