Exact Recovery Guarantees for Parameterized Nonlinear System Identification Problem under Sparse Disturbances or Semi-Oblivious Attacks

In this work, we study the problem of learning a nonlinear dynamical system by parameterizing its dynamics using basis functions. We assume that disturbances occur at each time step with an arbitrary probability $p$, which models the sparsity level of the disturbance vectors over time. These disturbances are drawn from an arbitrary, unknown probability distribution, which may depend on past disturbances, provided that it satisfies a zero-mean assumption. The primary objective of this paper is to learn the system's dynamics within a finite time and analyze the sample complexity as a function of $p$. To achieve this, we examine a LASSO-type non-smooth estimator, and establish necessary and sufficient conditions for its well-specifiedness and the uniqueness of the global solution to the underlying optimization problem. We then provide exact recovery guarantees for the estimator under two distinct conditions: boundedness and Lipschitz continuity of the basis functions. We show that finite-time exact recovery is achieved with high probability, even when $p$ approaches 1. Unlike prior works, which primarily focus on independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) disturbances and provide only asymptotic guarantees for system learning, this study presents the first finite-time analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems under a highly general disturbance model. Our framework allows for possible temporal correlations in the disturbances and accommodates semi-oblivious adversarial attacks, significantly broadening the scope of existing theoretical results.

@article{zhang2025_2409.00276,
  title={ Exact Recovery Guarantees for Parameterized Nonlinear System Identification Problem under Sparse Disturbances or Semi-Oblivious Attacks },
  author={ Haixiang Zhang and Baturalp Yalcin and Javad Lavaei and Eduardo D. Sontag },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.00276},
  year={ 2025 }
}