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Abatement and control of emissions from passenger car combustion engines have been in the focus for a long time. Nevertheless, to address upcoming real-world driving emission targets, knowledge of current engine emissions is crucial. Still, adequate sensors for transient emissions are seldom available in production engines. One way to target this issue is by applying virtual sensors which utilize available sensor information in an engine control unit (ECU) and provide estimates of the not measured emissions. For real-world application it is important that the virtual sensor has low complexity and works under varying conditions. Naturally, the choice of suitable inputs from all available candidates will have a strong impact on these factors. In this work a method to set up virtual sensors by means of design of experiments (DOE) and iterative identification of polynomial models is augmented with a novel input candidate selection strategy.

The control of the engine air system is an essential part for meeting the emission levels of current and upcoming legislation. Up to now different strategies were presented in the literature and also applied on real systems. Starting from simple single-input-single-output structures in combination with feedforward parts leading to advanced multi-input-multi-output approaches. Nevertheless, independent of the used control approach for each of them suitable references are necessary. Although it seems adequate to directly use the emission target quantities in a closed loop air system control, a fast and accurate measurement is seldom available. An alternative is to use intermediate quantities as references, like fresh air mass flow or oxygen concentrations, which represent the state of the air system. However, for control purposes each of these quantities has to be determined, i.e., measured or calculated.

Especially in view of more and more stringent emission legislation in passenger cars it is required to reduce the amount of pollutants. In the case of Diesel engines mainly NOx and PM are emitted during engine operation. The main influence factors for these pollutants are the in-cylinder oxygen concentration and the injected fuel amount. Typically the engine control task can be divided into two separate main parts, the fuel and the air system. Commonly air system control, consisting of a turbocharger and exhaust gas recirculation control, is used to provide the required amount of oxygen and address the emission targets, whereas the fuel is used to provide the desired torque. Especially in transient maneuvers the different time scales of both systems can lead to emission peaks which are not desired. Against this background in this work instead of the common way to address the air system, the fuel system is considered to reduce emission peaks during transients.