Flexible Least Squares Algorithm for Switching Models

The self-organizing model and expectation-maximization method are two traditional identification methods for switching models. They interactively update the parameters and model identities based on offline algorithms. In this paper, we propose a flexible recursive least squares algorithm which constructs the cost function based on two kinds of errors: the neighboring two-parameter estimation errors and the output estimation errors. Such an algorithm has several advantages over the two traditional identification algorithms: it (1) can estimate the parameters of all the sub-models without prior knowledge of the model identities; (2) has less computational efforts; and (3) can update the parameters with newly arrived data. The convergence properties and simulation examples are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm.