Via a simulation study we compare the finite sample performance of the deconvolution kernel density estimator in the supersmooth deconvolution problem to its asymptotic behaviour predicted by two asymptotic normality theorems. Our results indicate that for lower noise levels and moderate sample sizes the match between the asymptotic theory and the finite sample performance of the estimator is not satisfactory. On the other hand we show that the two approaches produce reasonably close results for higher noise levels. These observations in turn provide additional motivation for the study of deconvolution problems under the assumption that the error term variance $σ^2\to 0$ as the sample size $n\to\infty.$
We construct a density estimator in the bivariate uniform deconvolution model. For this model we derive four inversion formulas to express the bivariate density that we want to estimate in terms of the bivariate density of the observations. By substituting a kernel density estimator of the density of the observations we then get four different estimators. Next we construct an asymptotically optimal convex combination of these four estimators. Expansions for the bias, variance, as well as asymptotic normality, are derived. Some simulated examples are presented.
We construct a density estimator and an estimator of the distribution function in the uniform deconvolution model. The estimators are based on inversion formulas and kernel estimators of the density of the observations and its derivative. Asymptotic normality and the asymptotic biases are derived.
We derive asymptotic normality of kernel type deconvolution density estimators. In particular we consider deconvolution problems where the known component of the convolution has a symmetric lambda-stable distribution, 0<lambda<= 2. It turns out that the limit behavior changes if the exponent parameter lambda passes the value one, the case of Cauchy deconvolution.
A new maximum likelihood method for deconvoluting a continuous density with a positive lower bound on a known compact support in additive measurement error models with known error distribution using the approximate Bernstein type polynomial model, a finite mixture of specific beta distributions, is proposed. The change-point detection method is used to choose an optimal model degree. Based on a contaminated sample of size $n$, under an assumption which is satisfied, among others, by the generalized normal error distribution, the optimal rate of convergence of the mean integrated squared error …
We derive asymptotic normality of kernel type deconvolution estimators of the density, the distribution function at a fixed point, and of the probability of an interval. We consider the so called super smooth case where the characteristic function of the known distribution decreases exponentially. It turns out that the limit behavior of the pointwise estimators of the density and distribution function is relatively straightforward while the asymptotics of the estimator of the probability of an interval depends in a complicated way on the sequence of bandwidths.
We consider the problem of recovering a distribution function on the real line from observations additively contaminated with errors following the standard Laplace distribution. Assuming that the latent distribution is completely unknown leads to a nonparametric deconvolution problem. We begin by studying the rates of convergence relative to the $L^2$-norm and the Hellinger metric for the direct problem of estimating the sampling density, which is a mixture of Laplace densities with a possibly unbounded set of locations: the rate of convergence for the Bayes' density estimator corresponding to…
The aim of this paper is to show the usefulness of Meyer wavelets for the classical problem of density estimation and for density deconvolution from noisy observations. By using such wavelets, the computation of the empirical wavelet coefficients relies on the fast Fourier transform of the data and on the fact that Meyer wavelets are band-limited functions. This makes such estimators very simple to compute and this avoids the problem of evaluating wavelets at non-dyadic points which is the main drawback of classical wavelet-based density estimators. Our approach is based on term-by-term thresh…
We estimate linear functionals in the classical deconvolution problem by kernel estimators. We obtain a uniform central limit theorem with $\sqrt{n}$-rate on the assumption that the smoothness of the functionals is larger than the ill-posedness of the problem, which is given by the polynomial decay rate of the characteristic function of the error. The limit distribution is a generalized Brownian bridge with a covariance structure that depends on the characteristic function of the error and on the functionals. The proposed estimators are optimal in the sense of semiparametric efficiency. The cl…
Distribution estimation for noisy data via density deconvolution is a notoriously difficult problem for typical noise distributions like Gaussian. We develop a density deconvolution estimator based on quadratic programming (QP) that can achieve better estimation than kernel density deconvolution methods. The QP approach appears to have a more favorable regularization tradeoff between oversmoothing vs. oscillation, especially at the tails of the distribution. An additional advantage is that it is straightforward to incorporate a number of common density constraints such as nonnegativity, integr…
Stochastic volatility modelling of financial processes has become increasingly popular. The proposed models usually contain a stationary volatility process. We will motivate and review several nonparametric methods for estimation of the density of the volatility process. Both models based on discretely sampled continuous time processes and discrete time models will be discussed. The key insight for the analysis is a transformation of the volatility density estimation problem to a deconvolution model for which standard methods exist. Three type of nonparametric density estimators are reviewed: …
In this paper we consider the kernel estimators of a distribution function defined by the stochastic approximation algorithm when the observation are contamined by measurement errors. It is well known that this estimators depends heavily on the choice of a smoothing parameter called the bandwidth. We propose a specific second generation plug-in method of the deconvolution kernel distribution estimators defined by the stochastic approximation algorithm. We show that, using the proposed bandwidth selection and the stepsize which minimize the MISE (Mean Integrated Squared Error), the proposed est…
We study a new parametric approach for particular hidden stochastic models such as the Stochastic Volatility model. This method is based on contrast minimization and deconvolution. After proving consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimation leading to asymptotic confidence intervals, we provide a thorough numerical study, which compares most of the classical methods that are used in practice (Quasi Maximum Likelihood estimator, Simulated Expectation Maximization Likelihood estimator and Bayesian estimators). We prove that our estimator clearly outperforms the Maximum Likelihood Estima…
The authors consider the problem of estimating the density $g$ of independent and identically distributed variables $X\_i$, from a sample $Z\_1, ..., Z\_n$ where $Z\_i=X\_i+σε\_i$, $i=1, ..., n$, $ε$ is a noise independent of $X$, with $σε$ having known distribution. They present a model selection procedure allowing to construct an adaptive estimator of $g$ and to find non-asymptotic bounds for its $\mathbb{L}\_2(\mathbb{R})$-risk. The estimator achieves the minimax rate of convergence, in most cases where lowers bounds are available. A simulation study gives an illustration of the good practi…
In the present paper we consider Laplace deconvolution for discrete noisy data observed on the interval whose length may increase with a sample size. Although this problem arises in a variety of applications, to the best of our knowledge, it has been given very little attention by the statistical community. Our objective is to fill this gap and provide statistical treatment of Laplace deconvolution problem with noisy discrete data. The main contribution of the paper is explicit construction of an asymptotically rate-optimal (in the minimax sense) Laplace deconvolution estimator which is adapti…
Let $X_1,...,X_n$ be i.i.d. observations, where $X_i=Y_i+σ_n Z_i$ and the $Y$'s and $Z$'s are independent. Assume that the $Y$'s are unobservable and that they have the density $f$ and also that the $Z$'s have a known density $k.$ Furthermore, let $σ_n$ depend on $n$ and let $σ_n\to 0$ as $n\to\infty.$ We consider the deconvolution problem, i.e. the problem of estimation of the density $f$ based on the sample $X_1,...,X_n.$ A popular estimator of $f$ in this setting is the deconvolution kernel density estimator. We derive its asymptotic normality under two different assumptions on the relation…
We study a new parametric approach for hidden discrete-time diffusion models. This method is based on contrast minimization and deconvolution and leads to estimate a large class of stochastic models with nonlinear drift and nonlinear diffusion. It can be applied, for example, for ecological and financial state space models. After proving consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimation, leading to asymptotic confidence intervals, we provide a thorough numerical study, which compares many classical methods used in practice (Non Linear Least Square estimator, Monte Carlo Expectation Maxi-m…
Let $X_1,...,X_n$ be i.i.d. observations, where $X_i=Y_i+σZ_i$ and $Y_i$ and $Z_i$ are independent. Assume that unobservable $Y$'s are distributed as a random variable $UV,$ where $U$ and $V$ are independent, $U$ has a Bernoulli distribution with probability of zero equal to $p$ and $V$ has a distribution function $F$ with density $f.$ Furthermore, let the random variables $Z_i$ have the standard normal distribution and let $σ>0.$ Based on a sample $X_1,..., X_n,$ we consider the problem of estimation of the density $f$ and the probability $p.$ We propose a kernel type deconvolution estimator …
This paper considers the deconvolution problem in the case where the target signal is multidimensional and no information is known about the noise distribution. More precisely, no assumption is made on the noise distribution and no samples are available to estimate it: the deconvolution problem is solved based only on the corrupted signal observations. We establish the identifiability of the model up to translation when the signal has a Laplace transform with an exponential growth smaller than $2$ and when it can be decomposed into two dependent components. Then, we propose an estimator of the…
The paper discusses the estimation of a continuous density function of the target random field $X_{\bf{i}}$, $\bf{i}\in \mathbb {Z}^N$ which is contaminated by measurement errors. In particular, the observed random field $Y_{\bf{i}}$, $\bf{i}\in \mathbb {Z}^N$ is such that $Y_{\bf{i}}=X_{\bf{i}}+ε_{\bf{i}}$, where the random error $ε_{\bf{i}}$ is from a known distribution and independent of the target random field. Compared to the existing results, the paper is improved in two directions. First, the random vectors in contrast to univariate random variables are investigated. Second, a random fi…
The present paper studies density deconvolution in the presence of small Berkson errors, in particular, when the variances of the errors tend to zero as the sample size grows. It is known that when the Berkson errors are present, in some cases, the unknown density estimator can be obtain by simple averaging without using kernels. However, this may not be the case when Berkson errors are asymptotically small. By treating the former case as a kernel estimator with the zero bandwidth, we obtain the optimal expressions for the bandwidth. We show that the density of Berkson errors acts as a regular…
We develop $M$-estimation and deconvolution methodology with the goal of making well-founded statistical inference on an individual's blood alcohol level based on noisy measurements of their skin alcohol content. We first apply our results to a nonlinear least squares estimator of the key parameter that specifies the blood/skin alcohol relation in a diffusion model, and establish its existence, consistency, and asymptotic normality. To make inference on the unknown underlying blood alchohol curve, we develop a basis space deconvolution approach with regulazation, and determine the asymptotic d…
We derive the asymptotic distribution of the supremum distance of the deconvolution kernel density estimator to its expectation for certain supersmooth deconvolution problems. It turns out that the asymptotics are essentially different from the corresponding results for ordinary smooth deconvolution.
We consider the problem of denoising a function observed after a convolution with a random filter independent of the noise and satisfying some mean smoothness condition depending on an ill posedness coefficient. We establish the minimax rates for the Lp risk over balls of periodic Besov spaces with respect to the level of noise, and we provide an adaptive estimator achieving these rates up to log factors. Simulations were performed to highlight the effects of the ill posedness and of the distribution of the filter on the efficiency of the estimator.
We study the non-parametric estimation of an unknown stationary density fV of an unobserved strictly stationary volatility process $(\bm V_t)_{t\geq 0}$ on $\IRp^2 := (0,\infty)^2$ based on discrete-time observations in a stochastic volatility model. We identify the underlying multiplicative measurement error model and build an estimator based on the estimation of the Mellin transform of the scaled, integrated volatility process and a spectral cut-off regularisation of the inverse of the Mellin transform. We prove that the proposed estimator leads to a consistent estimation strategy. A fully d…
We consider the problem of estimating the density $g$ of identically distributed variables $X\_i$, from a sample $Z\_1, ..., Z\_n$ where $Z\_i=X\_i+σε\_i$, $i=1, ..., n$ and $σε\_i$ is a noise independent of $X\_i$ with known density $ σ^{-1}f\_ε(./σ)$. We generalize adaptive estimators, constructed by a model selection procedure, described in Comte et al. (2005). We study numerically their properties in various contexts and we test their robustness. Comparisons are made with respect to deconvolution kernel estimators, misspecification of errors, dependency,... It appears that our estimation a…
The subject of this paper is the problem of nonparametric estimation of a continuous distribution function from observations with measurement errors. We study minimax complexity of this problem when unknown distribution has a density belonging to the Sobolev class, and the error density is ordinary smooth. We develop rate optimal estimators based on direct inversion of empirical characteristic function. We also derive minimax affine estimators of the distribution function which are given by an explicit convex optimization problem. Adaptive versions of these estimators are proposed, and some nu…
The density deconvolution problem involves recovering a target density g from a sample that has been corrupted by noise. From the perspective of Le Cam's local asymptotic normality theory, we show that non-parametric density deconvolution with Gaussian noise behaves similarly to a low-dimensional parametric problem that can easily be solved by maximum likelihood. This framework allows us to give a simple account of the statistical efficiency of density deconvolution and to concisely describe the effect of Gaussian noise on our ability to estimate g, all while relying on classical maximum likel…
In a circular deconvolution model we consider the fully data driven density estimation of a circular random variable where the density of the additive independent measurement error is unknown. We have at hand two independent iid samples, one of the contaminated version of the variable of interest, and the other of the additive noise. We show optimality,in an oracle and minimax sense, of a fully data-driven weighted sum of orthogonal series density estimators. Two shapes of random weights are considered, one motivated by a Bayesian approach and the other by a well known model selection method. …
In a large class of statistical inverse problems it is necessary to suppose that the transformation that is inverted is known. Although, in many applications, it is unrealistic to make this assumption, the problem is often insoluble without it. However, if additional data are available, then it is possible to estimate consistently the unknown error density. Data are seldom available directly on the transformation, but repeated, or replicated, measurements increasingly are becoming available. Such data consist of ``intrinsic'' values that are measured several times, with errors that are general…
We consider a circular deconvolution problem, in which the density $f$ of a circular random variable $X$ must be estimated nonparametrically based on an i.i.d. sample from a noisy observation $Y$ of $X$. The additive measurement error is supposed to be independent of $X$. The objective of this work was to construct a fully data-driven estimation procedure when the error density $φ$ is unknown. We assume that in addition to the i.i.d. sample from $Y$, we have at our disposal an additional i.i.d. sample drawn independently from the error distribution. We first develop a minimax theory in terms o…
Fiducial inference, as generalized by Hannig et al. (2016), is applied to nonparametric g-modeling (Efron, 2016) in the discrete case. We propose a computationally efficient algorithm to sample from the fiducial distribution, and use the generated samples to construct point estimates and confidence intervals. We study the theoretical properties of the fiducial distribution and perform extensive simulations in various scenarios. The proposed approach yields good statistical performance in terms of the mean squared error of point estimators and the coverage of confidence intervals. Furthermore, …
This paper develops a density deconvolution estimator that assumes the density of interest is a member of the generalized skew-symmetric (GSS) family of distributions. Estimation occurs in two parts: a skewing function, as well as location and scale parameters must be estimated. A kernel method is proposed for estimating the skewing function. The mean integrated square error (MISE) of the resulting GSS deconvolution estimator is derived. Based on derivation of the MISE, two bandwidth estimation methods for estimating the skewing function are also proposed. A generalized method of moments (GMM)…
We identify the average dose-response function (ADRF) for a continuously valued error-contaminated treatment by a weighted conditional expectation. We then estimate the weights nonparametrically by maximising a local generalised empirical likelihood subject to an expanding set of conditional moment equations incorporated into the deconvolution kernels. Thereafter, we construct a deconvolution kernel estimator of ADRF. We derive the asymptotic bias and variance of our ADRF estimator and provide its asymptotic linear expansion, which helps conduct statistical inference. To select our smoothing p…
In this paper, we address the problem of estimating a multidimensional density $f$ by using indirect observations from the statistical model $Y=X+\varepsilon$. Here, $\varepsilon$ is a measurement error independent of the random vector $X$ of interest, and having a known density with respect to the Lebesgue measure. Our aim is to obtain optimal accuracy of estimation under $L_p$-losses when the error $\varepsilon$ has a characteristic function with a polynomial decay. To achieve this goal, we first construct a kernel estimator of $f$ which is fully data driven. Then, we derive for it an oracle…
In this work, we establish the asymptotic normality of the deconvolution kernel density estimator in the context of strongly mixing random fields. Only minimal conditions on the bandwidth parameter are required and a simple criterion on the strong mixing coefficients is provided. Our approach is based on the Lindeberg's method rather than on Bernstein's technique and coupling arguments widely used in previous works on nonparametric estimation for spatial processes. We deal also with nonmixing random fields which can be written as a (nonlinear) functional of i.i.d. random fields by considering …
Quantile estimation in deconvolution problems is studied comprehensively. In particular, the more realistic setup of unknown error distributions is covered. Our plug-in method is based on a deconvolution density estimator and is minimax optimal under minimal and natural conditions. This closes an important gap in the literature. Optimal adaptive estimation is obtained by a data-driven bandwidth choice. As a side result, we obtain optimal rates for the plug-in estimation of distribution functions with unknown error distributions. The method is applied to a real data example.
Let $X_1,..., X_n$ be i.i.d.\ copies of a random variable $X=Y+Z,$ where $ X_i=Y_i+Z_i,$ and $Y_i$ and $Z_i$ are independent and have the same distribution as $Y$ and $Z,$ respectively. Assume that the random variables $Y_i$'s are unobservable and that $Y=AV,$ where $A$ and $V$ are independent, $A$ has a Bernoulli distribution with probability of success equal to $1-p$ and $V$ has a distribution function $F$ with density $f.$ Let the random variable $Z$ have a known distribution with density $k.$ Based on a sample $X_1,...,X_n,$ we consider the problem of nonparametric estimation of the densit…
In many real applications, the distribution of measurement error could vary with each subject or even with each observation so the errors are heteroscedastic. In this paper, we propose a fast algorithm using a simulation-extrapolation (SIMEX) method to recover the unknown density in the case of heteroscedastic contamination. We show the consistency of the estimator and obtain its asymptotic variance and then address the practical selection of the smoothing parameter. We demonstrate that, through a finite sample simulation study, the proposed method performs better than the Fourier-type deconvo…
It is important to properly correct for measurement error when estimating density functions associated with biomedical variables. These estimators that adjust for measurement error are broadly referred to as density deconvolution estimators. While most methods in the literature assume the distribution of the measurement error to be fully known, a recently proposed method based on the empirical phase function (EPF) can deal with the situation when the measurement error distribution is unknown. The EPF density estimator has only been considered in the context of additive and homoscedastic measur…
We consider a continuous-time stochastic volatility model. The model contains a stationary volatility process, the multivariate density of the finite dimensional distributions of which we aim to estimate. We assume that we observe the process at discrete instants in time. The sampling times will be equidistant with vanishing distance. A multivariate Fourier-type deconvolution kernel density estimator based on the logarithm of the squared processes is proposed to estimate the multivariate volatility density. An expansion of the bias and a bound on the variance are derived. Key words: stochastic…
It is common, in deconvolution problems, to assume that the measurement errors are identically distributed. In many real-life applications, however, this condition is not satisfied and the deconvolution estimators developed for homoscedastic errors become inconsistent. In this paper, we introduce a kernel estimator of a density in the case of heteroscedastic contamination. We establish consistency of the estimator and show that it achieves optimal rates of convergence under quite general conditions. We study the limits of application of the procedure in some extreme situations, where we show t…
In this paper we consider a novel statistical inverse problem on the Poincaré, or Lobachevsky, upper (complex) half plane. Here the Riemannian structure is hyperbolic and a transitive group action comes from the space of $2\times2$ real matrices of determinant one via Möbius transformations. Our approach is based on a deconvolution technique which relies on the Helgason--Fourier calculus adapted to this hyperbolic space. This gives a minimax nonparametric density estimator of a hyperbolic density that is corrupted by a random Möbius transform. A motivation for this work comes from the reconstr…
We suppose that a Lévy process is observed at discrete time points. A rather general construction of minimum-distance estimators is shown to give consistent estimators of the Lévy-Khinchine characteristics as the number of observations tends to infinity, keeping the observation distance fixed. For a specific $C^2$-criterion this estimator is rate-optimal. The connection with deconvolution and inverse problems is explained. A key step in the proof is a uniform control on the deviations of the empirical characteristic function on the whole real line.
In the present paper we consider the problem of estimating a three-dimensional function $f$ based on observations from its noisy Laplace convolution. Our study is motivated by the analysis of Dynamic Contrast Enhanced (DCE) imaging data. We construct an adaptive wavelet-Laguerre estimator of $f$, derive minimax lower bounds for the $L^2$-risk when $f$ belongs to a three-dimensional Laguerre-Sobolev ball and demonstrate that the wavelet-Laguerre estimator is adaptive and asymptotically near-optimal in a wide range of Laguerre-Sobolev spaces. We carry out a limited simulations study and show tha…
This paper considers the problem of adaptive estimation of a mean pattern in a randomly shifted curve model. We show that this problem can be transformed into a linear inverse problem, where the density of the random shifts plays the role of a convolution operator. An adaptive estimator of the mean pattern, based on wavelet thresholding is proposed. We study its consistency for the quadratic risk as the number of observed curves tends to infinity, and this estimator is shown to achieve a near-minimax rate of convergence over a large class of Besov balls. This rate depends both on the smoothnes…
Kernel methods for deconvolution have attractive features, and prevail in the literature. However, they have disadvantages, which include the fact that they are usually suitable only for cases where the error distribution is infinitely supported and its characteristic function does not ever vanish. Even in these settings, optimal convergence rates are achieved by kernel estimators only when the kernel is chosen to adapt to the unknown smoothness of the target distribution. In this paper we suggest alternative ridge methods, not involving kernels in any way. We show that ridge methods (a) do no…
In this paper we consider a statistical estimation problem known as atomic deconvolution. Introduced in reliability, this model has a direct application when considering biological data produced by flow cytometers. In these experiments, biologists measure the fluorescence emission of treated cells and compare them with their natural emission to study the presence of specific molecules on the cells' surface. They observe a signal which is composed of a noise (the natural fluorescence) plus some additional signal related to the quantity of molecule present on the surface if any. From a statistic…
We derive estimators of the density of the event times of current status data. The estimators are derived for the situations where the distribution of the observation times is known and where this distribution is unknown. The density estimators are constructed from kernel estimators of the density of transformed current status data, which have a distribution similar to uniform deconvolution data. Expansions of the expectation and variance as well as asymptotic normality are derived. A reference density based bandwidth selection method is proposed. A simulated example is presented.
We show that there is an intimate connection between the theory of nonparametric (smoothed) maximum likelihood estimators for certain inverse problems and integral equations. This is illustrated by estimators for interval censoring and deconvolution problems. We also discuss the asymptotic efficiency of the MLE for smooth functionals in these models.
We propose a class of estimators for deconvolution in mixture models based on a simple two-step "bin-and-smooth" procedure applied to histogram counts. The method is both statistically and computationally efficient: by exploiting recent advances in convex optimization, we are able to provide a full deconvolution path that shows the estimate for the mixing distribution across a range of plausible degrees of smoothness, at far less cost than a full Bayesian analysis. This enables practitioners to conduct a sensitivity analysis with minimal effort. This is especially important for applied data an…
In this paper, a hard thresholding wavelet estimator is constructed for a deconvolution model in a periodic setting that has long-range dependent noise. The estimation paradigm is based on a maxiset method that attains a near optimal rate of convergence for a variety of L_p loss functions and a wide variety of Besov spaces in the presence of strong dependence. The effect of long-range dependence is detrimental to the rate of convergence. The method is implemented using a modification of the WaveD-package in R and an extensive numerical study is conducted. The numerical study supplements the th…
We consider the nonparametric estimation of a periodic function that is observed in additive Gaussian white noise after convolution with a ``boxcar,'' the indicator function of an interval. This is an idealized model for the problem of recovery of noisy signals and images observed with ``motion blur.'' If the length of the boxcar is rational, then certain frequencies are irretreviably lost in the periodic model. We consider the rate of convergence of estimators when the length of the boxcar is irrational, using classical results on approximation of irrationals by continued fractions. A basic q…
