A universality advantage of stochastic excitation signals for adaptive control (Q1821736)

Adaptive control schemes usually depend on estimation of system parameters, which in turn depends on excitation of modes associated with these parameters. Such excitation is supplied by plant noise, the adaptive control signal itself, and any external excitation such as a reference signal. In this note, it is shown that there is a universality advantage for any externally applied signal to be stochastic rather than deterministic. The crucial property of a stochastic signal exploited in this note is its unpredictabilty by any causal system, such as an adaptive control scheme. When such unpredictable signals excite an adaptive control scheme, there is no need to deliberately constrain the adaptation to be 'slow( or 'excitation maintaining' to ensure adequate identification.