Signal Estimation for Vehicle Body Accelerations Using Piecewise Linear System Identification in the Frequency Domain

In this work, we investigate a signal estimation problem which is common and critical for durability design of vehicle bodies. The relation between the frequency responses of accelerometers is the target to model so that the ones of easy-to-measure accelerometers can estimate the responses of hard-to-measure accelerometers. A piecewise linear frequency-domain identification method relying on finite impulse response (FIR) models is proposed and performed to tackle the nonlinearity issue in the signal estimation problems: first, the interesting frequency range is segmented into three subranges which are clearly identified by peak histograms of frequency signals. Then, FIR models which provide a satisfactory description of the system are constructed to estimate the frequency responses of the interesting signals at subranges, one for each. The performance of the proposed approach is validated by using real-world data under multiple working conditions. The results show that the proposed method has a good estimation accuracy, and it brings the benefit that the number of accelerometers can be significantly reduced during the durability design of vehicle bodies.

Automated summary

In this study, a signal estimation method is proposed to address a common and critical issue in vehicle body durability design. The relationship between the frequency responses of accelerometers is modeled to allow easy-to-measure accelerometers to estimate the responses of hard-to-measure ones. A piecewise linear frequency-domain identification method based on FIR models is developed to handle the nonlinearity problem in signal estimation. The method segments the interested frequency range, identifies three subranges using peak histograms, and constructs FIR models to estimate the frequency responses within each subrange. Real-world data under multiple working conditions validate the performance of the proposed approach, which shows good estimation accuracy and significant reduction in the number of accelerometers during the durability design of vehicle bodies.