A soft sensor model of cell concentration based on IBDA-RELM.

For fermentation process with multi-operating conditions, it is difficult to predict the cell concentration under the new operating conditions by the soft sensor model established under the specific operating conditions. Inspired by the idea of transfer learning, a method based on an improved balanced distribution adaptive regularization extreme learning machine (IBDA-RELM) was proposed to solve the problem. The domain adaptation (DA) method in transfer learning is developed to reduce distribution distance by transforming data. However, the joint distribution adaptation (JDA) and the balanced distribution adaptation (BDA) in DA cannot be directly applied to regression problems. The fuzzy sets (FSs) method was proposed to solve this issue. Finally, a soft sensor model of cell concentration was realized by inputting the converted data to the RELM model. Simulation verification was carried out with three operating conditions at the scene of fermentation. The transfer effects of three DA methods, including transfer component analysis (TCA), improved joint distribution adaptation (IJDA) as well as IBDA, were compared. The predicted results show that IBDA-RELM had a better performance in the soft sensor of cell concentration under multi-operating conditions.