ABSTRACT
In this chapter we concentrate on dynamic, distributed systems described by partial differential equations. Under certain conditions, some of these systems, particularly those described by linear PDEs, have analytical solutions. If such a solution does exist and the unknown parameters appear in the solution expression, the estimation problem can often be reduced to that for systems described by algebraic equations. However, most of the time, an analytical solution cannot be found and the PDEs have to be solved numerically. This case is of interest here. Our general approach is to convert the partial differential equations (PDEs) to a set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and then employ the techniques presented in Chapter 6 taking into consideration the high dimensionality of the problem.
