A frequency-domain approach for estimating continuous-time diffusively coupled linear networks

<copy>©2025 EUCAThis paper addresses the problem of consistently estimating a continuous-time (CT) diffusively coupled network (DCN) to identify physical components in a physical network. We develop a three-step frequency-domain identification method for linear CT DCNs that allows to accurately recover all the physical component values of the network while exploiting the particular symmetric structure in a DCN model. This method uses the estimated noise covariance as a non-parametric noise model to minimize variance of the parameter estimates, obviating the need to select a parametric noise model. The method is illustrated with an application from In-Circuit Testing of printed circuit boards. Experimental results highlight the method’s ability to consistently estimate component values in a complex network with only a single excitation.