Long-time stability and accuracy of the ensemble Kalman--Bucy filter for fully observed processes and small measurement noise

The ensemble Kalman filter has become a popular data assimilation technique in the geosciences. However, little is known theoretically about its long term stability and accuracy. In this paper, we investigate the behavior of an ensemble Kalman--Bucy filter applied to continuous-time filtering problems. We derive mean field limiting equations as the ensemble size goes to infinity as well as uniform-in-time accuracy and stability results for finite ensemble sizes. The later results require that the process is fully observed and that the measurement noise is small. We also demonstrate that our ensemble Kalman--Bucy filter is consistent with the classic Kalman--Bucy filter for linear systems and Gaussian processes. We finally verify our theoretical findings for the Lorenz-63 system

Convergence Analysis of Ensemble Kalman Inversion: The Linear, Noisy Case

We present an analysis of ensemble Kalman inversion, based on the continuous time limit of the algorithm. The analysis of the dynamical behaviour of the ensemble allows us to establish well-posedness and convergence results for a fixed ensemble size. We will build on the results presented in [26] and generalise them to the case of noisy observational data, in particular the influence of the noise on the convergence will be investigated, both theoretically and numerically. We focus on linear inverse problems where a very complete theoretical analysis is possible

A strongly convergent numerical scheme from Ensemble Kalman inversion

The Ensemble Kalman methodology in an inverse problems setting can be viewed as an iterative scheme, which is a weakly tamed discretization scheme for a certain stochastic differential equation (SDE). Assuming a suitable approximation result, dynamical properties of the SDE can be rigorously pulled back via the discrete scheme to the original Ensemble Kalman inversion. The results of this paper make a step towards closing the gap of the missing approximation result by proving a strong convergence result in a simplified model of a scalar stochastic differential equation. We focus here on a toy model with similar properties than the one arising in the context of Ensemble Kalman filter. The proposed model can be interpreted as a single particle filter for a linear map and thus forms the basis for further analysis. The difficulty in the analysis arises from the formally derived limiting SDE with non-globally Lipschitz continuous nonlinearities both in the drift and in the diffusion. Here the standard Euler-Maruyama scheme might fail to provide a strongly convergent numerical scheme and taming is necessary. In contrast to the strong taming usually used, the method presented here provides a weaker form of taming. We present a strong convergence analysis by first proving convergence on a domain of high probability by using a cut-off or localisation, which then leads, combined with bounds on moments for both the SDE and the numerical scheme, by a bootstrapping argument to strong convergence

On the Mathematical Theory of Ensemble (Linear-Gaussian) Kalman-Bucy Filtering

The purpose of this review is to present a comprehensive overview of the theory of ensemble Kalman-Bucy filtering for linear-Gaussian signal models. We present a system of equations that describe the flow of individual particles and the flow of the sample covariance and the sample mean in continuous-time ensemble filtering. We consider these equations and their characteristics in a number of popular ensemble Kalman filtering variants. Given these equations, we study their asymptotic convergence to the optimal Bayesian filter. We also study in detail some non-asymptotic time-uniform fluctuation, stability, and contraction results on the sample covariance and sample mean (or sample error track). We focus on testable signal/observation model conditions, and we accommodate fully unstable (latent) signal models. We discuss the relevance and importance of these results in characterising the filter's behaviour, e.g. it's signal tracking performance, and we contrast these results with those in classical studies of stability in Kalman-Bucy filtering. We provide intuition for how these results extend to nonlinear signal models and comment on their consequence on some typical filter behaviours seen in practice, e.g. catastrophic divergence

Well Posedness and Convergence Analysis of the Ensemble Kalman Inversion

The ensemble Kalman inversion is widely used in practice to estimate unknown parameters from noisy measurement data. Its low computational costs, straightforward implementation, and non-intrusive nature makes the method appealing in various areas of application. We present a complete analysis of the ensemble Kalman inversion with perturbed observations for a fixed ensemble size when applied to linear inverse problems. The well-posedness and convergence results are based on the continuous time scaling limits of the method. The resulting coupled system of stochastic differential equations allows to derive estimates on the long-time behaviour and provides insights into the convergence properties of the ensemble Kalman inversion. We view the method as a derivative free optimization method for the least-squares misfit functional, which opens up the perspective to use the method in various areas of applications such as imaging, groundwater flow problems, biological problems as well as in the context of the training of neural networks