Nonlinear joint state and parameter estimation : application to a wastewater treatment plant

A systematic approach to joint state and time-varying parameter estimation for nonlinear systems is proposed in this paper. Applying the sector nonlinearity transformation to both the system nonlinearities and the time-varying parameters, the original system is equivalently rewritten as a Takagi-Sugeno system with unmeasurable premise variables. A joint state and parameter observer whose parameters are designed by solving an LMI optimization problem is then proposed. The target application is a realistic model of an activated sludge wastewater treatment plant, being an uncertain nonlinear system affected by a time-varying parameter.