This book reviews current design paths for soft sensors, and guides readers in evaluating different choices. The book presents case studies resulting from collaborations between the authors and industrial partners. The solutions presented, some of which are implemented on-line in industrial plants, are designed to cope with a wide range of applications from measuring system backup and what-if analysis through real-time prediction for plant control to sensor diagnosis and validation.

Luigi Fortuna has been Professor of System Theory at the University of Catania since 1994. He has published more than 280 technical papers and is co-author of seven books including, for Springer,Soft Computing(1-85233-308-1, 2001, 280 pp, SC) andMicroelectronics and Microsystems (1-85233-499-1, 2001, 222 pp, HC). He holds several USA patents. His scientific interests include automatic control, nonlinear science and complexity, chaos, cellular neural networks with applications in bioengineering. He has been an IEEE Fellow since 2000.

Salvatore Graziani received a M.S. degree in electronic engineering and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, both from the Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy, in 1990 and 1994, respectively. In 1990 he joined the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, Elettrica e dei Sistemi, Università di Catania, where he is an Associate Professor of Electric and Electronic Measurement and Instrumentation. His primary research interests lie in the field of sensors and actuators, signal processing, multisensor data fusion, neural networks, and smart sensors. He has co-authored several scientific papers and one book.

Maria Gabriella Xibilia holds an M.S. degree in electronic engineering and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, both from the Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy, in 1991 and 1995, respectively. In 1998 she joined the Dipartimento di Matematica of the Università degli Studi di Messina, where she is an Assistant Professor of Automatic Control. Her primary research interests lie in the field of process control, system identification, soft computing and fault detection. She has coauthored several scientific papers and three books.