Nonlinear System Identification: Prediction Error Method vs Neural Network

System identification has been used in various domains for analyzing system properties and carrying out filtering, prediction and automatic control. Prediction error method (PEM) is one of the classic methods to estimate system parameters and exploit dynamical structure of the studied system; while neural network (NN) is favorable for black-box systems with unknown structures. As the popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-physical systems (CPS) increases, the identification tasks are moving more towards resource-constrained devices. Accordingly, some studies incorporate system prior knowledge into NN to improve its efficiency. However, it is unclear whether the adapted NN outperforms the classic PEM.This paper provides a fair comparison between two techniques in terms of estimation accuracy and speed on several common nonlinear systems. The results indicate that NN is wider applicable and accurate, but more expensive from computational perspective; whereas PEM is more lightweight, but has limitations when the system input has frequent abrupt changes.