A complete solution to Blackwell's unique ergodicity problem for hidden Markov chains

Derivatives of Entropy Rate in Special Families of Hidden Markov Chains

Consider a hidden Markov chain obtained as the observation process of an ordinary Markov chain corrupted by noise. Zuk, et. al. [13], [14] showed how, in principle, one can explicitly compute the derivatives of the entropy rate of at extreme values of the noise. Namely, they showed that the derivatives of standard upper approximations to the entropy rate actually stabilize at an explicit finite time. We generalize this result to a natural class of hidden Markov chains called ``Black Holes.'' We also discuss in depth special cases of binary Markov chains observed in binary symmetric noise, and …

基于可达性与一致弱连续性的非线性滤波器的唯一遍历性

Unique Ergodicity of Non-Linear Filters via Reachability and Uniform Weak Continuity

本文提出一种基于可达性的方法，证明了在紧波兰度量空间下非线性滤波过程的唯一遍历性，并得出了占用测度的弱收敛结果，其条件与基于滤波稳定性的方法互补。

General-order observation-driven models: ergodicity and consistency of the maximum likelihood estimator

The class of observation-driven models (ODMs) includes many models of non-linear time series which, in a fashion similar to, yet different from, hidden Markov models (HMMs), involve hidden variables. Interestingly, in contrast to most HMMs, ODMs enjoy likelihoods that can be computed exactly with computational complexity of the same order as the number of observations, making maximum likelihood estimation the privileged approach for statistical inference for these models. A celebrated example of general order ODMs is the GARCH$(p,q)$ model, for which ergodicity and inference has been studied e…

A simple proof of Kaijser's unique ergodicity result for hidden Markov $α$-chains

According to a 1975 result of T. Kaijser, if some nonvanishing product of hidden Markov model (HMM) stepping matrices is subrectangular, and the underlying chain is aperiodic, the corresponding $α$-chain has a unique invariant limiting measure $λ$. Here the $α$-chain $\{α_n\}=\{(α_{ni})\}$ is given by \[α_{ni}=P(X_n=i| Y_n,Y_{n-1},...),\] where $\{(X_n,Y_n)\}$ is a finite state HMM with unobserved Markov chain component $\{X_n\}$ and observed output component $\{Y_n\}$. This defines $\{α_n\}$ as a stochastic process taking values in the probability simplex. It is not hard to see that $\{α_n\}$…

Maximum Likelihood Estimator for Hidden Markov Models in continuous time

The paper studies large sample asymptotic properties of the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) for the parameter of a continuous time Markov chain, observed in white noise. Using the method of weak convergence of likelihoods due to I.Ibragimov and R.Khasminskii, consistency, asymptotic normality and convergence of moments are established for MLE under certain strong ergodicity conditions of the chain.

Uniform Chernoff and Dvoretzky-Kiefer-Wolfowitz-type inequalities for Markov chains and related processes

We observe that the technique of Markov contraction can be used to establish measure concentration for a broad class of non-contracting chains. In particular, geometric ergodicity provides a simple and versatile framework. This leads to a short, elementary proof of a general concentration inequality for Markov and hidden Markov chains (HMM), which supercedes some of the known results and easily extends to other processes such as Markov trees. As applications, we give a Dvoretzky-Kiefer-Wolfowitz-type inequality and a uniform Chernoff bound. All of our bounds are dimension-free and hold for cou…