Address:
COMSOL, Inc.
1 New England Executive Park, Ste 350
Burlington, MA 01803 USA
Phone: +1 781-273-3322
Fax: +1 781-273-6603
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Editor Contact:
Bernt Nilsson, VP of Marketing

Reader Contact:
Bjorn Sjodin, VP of Applications

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Comprehensive Signals and Systems Analysis Package Eases Model Verification, Calibration.

BURLINGTON, MA (October 23, 2006)-The COMSOL Signals & Systems Lab enhances the COMSOL Multiphysics™ modeling environment with the functions necessary to perform accurate model verification and calibration. This new tool also provides an integrated environment for a wide range of tasks involving the analysis of signals and systems for both professional use and in education.

Model verification and calibration are two essential stages in the development of simulations intended for use in the real world, whether in manufacturing, product development, or the research laboratory. Verification, also known as model checking, is the process of examining a model´s implementation to see that it meets the original specification, such as making certain that it accounts for the specified laws of physics. The model can then be calibrated for the specifics of the task at hand, accounting for a particular set of operating conditions. Here the modeler tunes model parameters to ensure that model results follow those from experimental measurements

Both of these stages can benefit greatly from the latest signal-processing, analysis, and statistical algorithms, methods, and techniques provided by the Signals & Systems Lab. This is a versatile set of more than a hundred function calls, designed for use with COMSOL Script™, that supports both continuous-time and discrete-time systems. The commands address four major related areas: digital signal processing, control-system analysis, adaptive filtering, and statistical analysis.

In more detail, this rich set of high-level functions in the Signals and Systems Lab addresses:

• Data preprocessing such as for digital filter design, windowing, resampling/interpolation, and detrending/prefiltering
• Frequency analysis using a discrete-time Fourier transform
• Control-system analysis including computation of impulse and step responses, and visualization tools such as Bode plots, Nyquist plots, root-locus plots and pole-zero plots
• Analysis of stochastic processes using spectral analysis, covariance-function estimation, and PDF (probability distribution function) fitting
• Time-frequency description tools as an extension to Fourier analysis and spectral analysis for signals with time-varying characteristics
• Adaptive filtering including recursive estimation of time-varying models, and Kalman filtering for state estimation
• Statistical analysis (complementing similar functions in COMSOL Script to now handle non-Gaussian distributions) for random-number generation, estimating parametric distributions from data, as well as computing error functions and their inverses for hypothesis testing and finding confidence intervals

For all these applications areas, the functions have support for embedded Monte Carlo simulations. These run in the background without explicit user interaction and provide confidence bounds in graphical illustrations and numerical results.

Other features available for these application areas include customized overloaded plot functions that intelligently handle multiple argument lists; a graphical user interface for data analysis using plots familiar to control engineers; a wide variety of benchmark examples; plus an extensive database containing real signals and demonstration routines. The Signals & System Lab is also fully integrated with COMSOL Multiphysics for model-based analysis.

Price and Availability

The COMSOL Signals & Systems Lab sells for $795; it runs under COMSOL Script, which sells for $995. Both are available immediately.

About the COMSOL product line

COMSOL Multiphysics is a scientific-software environment for the modeling and simulation of any physics-based system. A particular strength is its ability to account for multiphysics phenomena. Optional modules add discipline-specific tools for chemical engineering, earth science, electromagnetics, heat transfer, MEMS and structural mechanics. Other products include COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab™, which allows users to model reacting systems; and COMSOL Script™, a programming language that works both as a general-purpose scientific computational tool and provides a textual based interface to COMSOL Multiphysics models. The COMSOL products are available for the Windows, Linux, Solaris, and the Macintosh operating systems. Full details about COMSOL Multiphysics and related products are available at www.comsol.com

About the COMSOL Group

COMSOL was founded in 1986 in Stockholm, Sweden, and has grown to include offices in the Benelux, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and a US presence with offices in Burlington, MA, Los Angeles, CA, and Palo Alto, CA. Additional information about the company is available at www.comsol.com

COMSOL and FEMLAB are registered trademarks of COMSOL AB. COMSOL Multiphysics, COMSOL Script, and COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab are trademarks of COMSOL AB. Other product or brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.