arXiv subjects

R. W. R. Darling

Publications and source records attributed to R. W. R. Darling.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv1998

Intrinsic Location Parameter of a Diffusion Process

For nonlinear functions f of a random vector Y, E[f(Y)] and f(E[Y]) usually differ. Consequently the mathematical expectation of Y is not intrinsic: when we change coordinate systems, it is not invariant.This article is about a fundamental and hitherto neglected property of random vectors of the form Y = f(X(t)), where X(t) is the value at time t of a diffusion process X: namely that there exists a measure of location, called the "intrinsic location parameter" (ILP), which coincides with mathematical expectation only in special cases, and which is invariant under change of coordinate systems. The construction uses martingales with respect to the intrinsic geometry of diffusion processes, and the heat flow of harmonic mappings. We compute formulas which could be useful to statisticians, engineers, and others who use diffusion process models; these have immediate application, discussed in a separate article, to the construction of an intrinsic nonlinear analog to the Kalman Filter. We present here a numerical simulation of a nonlinear SDE, showing how well the ILP formula tracks the mean of the SDE for a Euclidean geometry.

math.PR↗

arXiv1998

Geometrically Intrinsic Nonlinear Recursive Filters I: Algorithms

The Geometrically Intrinsic Nonlinear Recursive Filter, or GI Filter, is designed to estimate an arbitrary continuous-time Markov diffusion process X subject to nonlinear discrete-time observations. The GI Filter is fundamentally different from the much-used Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), and its second-order variants, even in the simplest nonlinear case, in that: (i) It uses a quadratic function of a vector observation to update the state, instead of the linear function used by the EKF. (ii) It is based on deeper geometric principles, which make the GI Filter coordinate-invariant. This implies, for example, that if a linear system were subjected to a nonlinear transformation f of the state-space and analyzed using the GI Filter, the resulting state estimates and conditional variances would be the push-forward under f of the Kalman Filter estimates for the untransformed system - a property which is not shared by the EKF or its second-order variants. The noise covariance of X and the observation covariance themselves induce geometries on state space and observation space, respectively, and associated canonical connections. A sequel to this paper develops stochastic differential geometry results - based on "intrinsic location parameters", a notion derived from the heat flow of harmonic mappings - from which we derive the coordinate-free filter update formula. The present article presents the algorithm with reference to a specific example - the problem of tracking and intercepting a target, using sensors based on a moving missile. Computational experiments show that, when the observation function is highly nonlinear, there exist choices of the noise parameters at which the GI Filter significantly outperforms the EKF.

math.OC↗

arXiv1998

Geometrically Intrinsic Nonlinear Recursive Filters II: Foundations

This paper contains the technical foundations from stochastic differential geometry for the construction of geometrically intrinsic nonlinear recursive filters. A diffusion X on a manifold N is run for a time interval T, with a random initial condition. There is a single observation consisting of a nonlinear function of X(T), corrupted by noise, and with values in another manifold M. The noise covariance of X and the observation covariance themselves induce geometries on M and N, respectively. Using these geometries we compute approximate but coordinate-free formulas for the "best estimate" of X(T), given the observation, and its conditional variance. Calculations are based on use of Jacobi fields and of "intrinsic location parameters", a notion derived from the heat flow of harmonic mappings. When any nonlinearity is present, the resulting formulas are not the same as those for the continuous-discrete Extended Kalman Filter. A subsidiary result is a formula for computing approximately the "exponential barycenter" of a random variable S on a manifold, i.e. a point z such that the inverse image of S under the exponential map at z has mean zero in the tangent space at z.

math.PR↗