The identification of time-delay systems

We present a method for the identification of both, scalar and nonscalar time-delay systems. If the dynamics of the system investigated is governed by a time-delay induced instability, the method allows to determine the delay time. In a second step, the time-delay differential equation can be recovered from the time series. The dynamics is not required to be settled on its attractor, which also makes transient motion accessible to the analysis. If the motion actually takes place on a chaotic attractor, the applicability of the method does not depend on the dimensionality of the chaotic attractor. For demonstration, we analyze time series, which are obtained with the help of the numerical integration of a two-dimensional time-delay differential equation.