A closed-loop identification protocol for nonlinear dynamical systems

A previous work introduced an optimal identification (OI) technique for reliably extracting model parameters of biochemical reaction systems from tailored laboratory experiments. The notion of optimality enters through seeking an external control in the laboratory producing data that leads to minimum uncertainties in the identified parameter distributions. A number of algorithmic and operational improvements are introduced in this paper to OI, aiming to build a more practical and efficient closed-loop identification protocol/procedure (CLIP) for nonlinear dynamical systems. The improvements in CLIP include (a) inversion cost function modification to preferably search for the upper and lower boundaries of the parameter distributions consistent with the observed data, (b) dynamic search range updating of the unknown parameters to better exploit the information from the prior iterative experiments, (c) replacing the control genetic algorithm by the simplex method to enable better balance between operational cost and inversion quality, and (d) utilizing virtual sensitivity optimization techniques to further reduce the laboratory costs. The workings of CLIP utilizing these new algorithms are illustrated in indentifying a simulated tRNA proofreading model, and the results demonstrate enhanced performance of CLIP in terms of algorithmic reliability and efficiency.