Rates for branching particle approximations of continuous-discrete filters

Herein, we analyze an efficient branching particle method for asymptotic solutions to a class of continuous-discrete filtering problems. Suppose that $t\to X_t$ is a Markov process and we wish to calculate the measure-valued process $t\to\mu_t(\cdot)\doteq P\{X_t\in \cdot|\sigma\{Y_{t_k}, t_k\leq t\}\}$, where $t_k=k\epsilon$ and $Y_{t_k}$ is a distorted, corrupted, partial observation of $X_{t_k}$. Then, one constructs a particle system with observation-dependent branching and $n$ initial particles whose empirical measure at time $t$, $\mu_t^n$, closely approximates $\mu_t$. Each particle evolves independently of the other particles according to the law of the signal between observation times $t_k$, and branches with small probability at an observation time. For filtering problems where $\epsilon$ is very small, using the algorithm considered in this paper requires far fewer computations than other algorithms that branch or interact all particles regardless of the value of $\epsilon$. We analyze the algorithm on L\'{e}vy-stable signals and give rates of convergence for $E^{1/2}\{\|\mu^n_t-\mu_t\|_{\gamma}^2\}$, where $\Vert\cdot\Vert_{\gamma}$ is a Sobolev norm, as well as related convergence results.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/105051605000000539 in the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

CONVERGENCE OF MARKOV CHAIN APPROXIMATIONS TO STOCHASTIC REACTION DIFFUSION EQUATIONS

In the context of simulating the transport of a chemical or bacterial contaminant through a moving sheet of water, we extend a well established method of approximating reaction-diffusion equations with Markov chains by allowing convection, certain Poisson measure driving sources and a larger class of reaction functions. Our alterations also feature dramatically slower Markov chain state change rates often yielding a ten to one hundred fold simulation speed increase over the previous version of the method as evidenced in our computer implementations. On a weighted L2 Hilbert space chosen to symmetrize the elliptic operator, we consider existence of and convergence to pathwise unique mild solutions of our stochastic reaction-diffusion equation. Our main convergence result, a quenched law of large numbers, establishes convergence in probability of our Markov chain approximations for each fixed path of our driving Poisson measure source. As a consequence, we also obtain the annealed law of large numbers establishing convergence in probability of our Markov chains to the solution of the stochastic reaction-diffusion equation while considering the Poisson source as a random medium for the Markov chains.

EXPLICIT STRONG SOLUTIONS OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL STOCHASTIC DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

Herein, we characterize strong solutions of multidimensional stochastic differential equations (formula) that can be represented locally as (formula) where W is an multidimensional Brownian motion and U, (symbole) are continuous functions. Assuming that (symbole) is continuously differentiable, we find that (symbole) must satisfy a commutation relation for such explicit solutions to exist and we identify all drift terms b as well as U and (symbole) that will allow X to be represented in this manner. Our method is based on the existence of a local change of coordinates in terms of a diffeomorphism between the solutions X and the strong solutions to a simpler Ito integral equation.Diffeomorphism, Ito processes, explicit solutions.

On almost sure limit theorems for detecting long-range dependent, heavy-tailed processes

Marcinkiewicz strong law of large numbers, ${n^{-\frac1p}}\sum_{k=1}^{n} (d_{k}- d)\rightarrow 0\$ almost surely with $p\in(1,2)$, are developed for products $d_k=\prod_{r=1}^s x_k^{(r)}$, where the $x_k^{(r)} = \sum_{l=-\infty}^{\infty}c_{k-l}^{(r)}\xi_l^{(r)}$ are two-sided linear process with coefficients $\{c_l^{(r)}\}_{l\in \mathbb{Z}}$ and i.i.d. zero-mean innovations $\{\xi_l^{(r)}\}_{l\in \mathbb{Z}}$. The decay of the coefficients $c_l^{(r)}$ as $|l|\to\infty$, can be slow enough for $\{x_k^{(r)}\}$ to have long memory while $\{d_k\}$ can have heavy tails. The long-range dependence and heavy tails for $\{d_k\}$ are handled simultaneously and a decoupling property shows the convergence rate is dictated by the worst of long-range dependence and heavy tails, but not their combination. The results provide a means to estimate how much (if any) long-range dependence and heavy tails a sequential data set possesses, which is done for real financial data. All of the stocks we considered had some degree of heavy tails. The majority also had long-range dependence. The Marcinkiewicz strong law of large numbers is also extended to the multivariate linear process case.Comment: 28 pages, 1 Figur