Selection of optimal denoising-based regularization hyper-parameters for performance improvement in a sensor validation model

Multilayered auto-associative neural architectures have widely been used in empirical sensor modeling. Typically, such empirical sensor models are used in sensor calibration and fault monitoring systems. However, simultaneous optimization of related performance metrics, i.e., auto-sensitivity, cross-sensitivity, and fault-detectability, is not a trivial task. Learning procedures for parametric and other relevant non-parametric empirical models are sensitive to optimization and regularization methods. Therefore, there is a need for active learning strategies that can better exploit the underlying statistical structure among input sensors and are simple to regularize and fine-tune. To this end, we investigated the greedy layer-wise learning strategy and denoising-based regularization procedure for sensor model optimization. We further explored the effects of denoising-based regularization hyper-parameters such as noise-type and noise-level on sensor model performance and suggested optimal settings through rigorous experimentation. A visualization procedure was introduced to obtain insight into the internal semantics of the learned model. These visualizations allowed us to suggest an implicit noise-generating process for efficient regularization in higher-order layers. We found that the greedy-learning procedure improved the overall robustness of the sensor model. To keep experimentation unbiased and immune to noise-related artifacts in real sensors, the sensor data were sampled from simulators of a nuclear steam supply system of a pressurized water reactor and a Tennessee Eastman chemical process. Finally, we compared the performance of an optimally regularized sensor model with auto-associative neural network, auto-associative kernel regression, and fuzzy similarity-based sensor models.