A Development of Continuous-Time Transfer Entropy

Abstract

Transfer entropy (TE) was introduced by Schreiber in 2000 as a measurement of the predictive capacity of one stochastic process with respect to another. Originally stated for discrete time processes, we expand the theory in line with recent work of Spinney, Prokopenko, and Lizier to define TE for stochastic processes indexed over a compact interval taking values in a Polish state space. We provide a definition for continuous time TE using the Radon-Nikodym Theorem, random measures, and projective limits of probability spaces. As our main result, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions to obtain this definition as a limit of discrete time TE, as well as illustrate its application via an example involving Poisson point processes. As a derivative of continuous time TE, we also define the transfer entropy rate between two processes and show that (under mild assumptions) their stationarity implies a constant rate. We also investigate TE between homogeneous Markov jump processes and discuss some open problems and possible future directions.