Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for simultaneously characterizing the disturbance of a dynamical system and the dynamic response model of the system. The disturbance is characterized by a sum of reference signals weighted by disturbance parameters. The dynamic response model is similarly characterized by a set of response parameters, which model the relationship between a set of test signals and the response to these test signals. The disturbance parameters and the response parameters are estimated jointly to provide a characterization of the dynamical system.