arXiv:2511.01605cs.LGstat.ML2025-11

揭示托普利茨协方差估计的优化景观,证明联合优化频幅可全局收敛。

The Optimization Landscape of Carathéodory Decomposition of Toeplitz Covariances

  • 用过参数化卡托里多里分解建模协方差,联合优化频率与振幅
  • 理论证明:任意正定驻点均能恢复真实协方差矩阵
  • 数值实验显示梯度下降可逼近克拉美-罗下界,适合信号处理应用

托普利茨协方差估计是统计信号处理中的经典问题,但其高斯最大似然目标函数的几何结构仍不完全清晰。近年来的牛顿型、分步优化和梯度方法表明,当样本数足够大时,该非凸问题常可全局求解,但计算景观复杂。本文通过正定托普利茨协方差矩阵的过参数化卡托里多里表示研究此现象。卡托里多里分解使用不同频率和振幅的导向矢量组合参数化协方差。首个结果表明:固定网格振幅优化本质上不足,即使在总体设置下,且有任意多固定频率网格点,振幅仅优化仍存在严格正误差下界(网格失配时)。这促使同时优化振幅与频率。主理论结果证明:联合优化具有良性总体景观——所有生成正定协方差的驻点均恢复真实托普利茨协方差。这些发现提示:托普利茨协方差问题的总体景观全局良性质,但可能高度病态。数值实验显示,过参数化提升收敛速度与有限样本精度,尤其使简单梯度下降逼近克拉美-罗下界,同时保持实现简单。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Toeplitz covariance estimation is a classical problem in statistical signal processing, yet the geometry of the Gaussian maximum-likelihood objective remains only partially understood. Recent algorithms, including Newton-type, majorization-minimization, and gradient-based methods, indicate that the nonconvex problem can often be globally solved when the number of samples is sufficiently large, but they also reveal a difficult computational landscape. In this work, we study this phenomenon through an overparameterized Caratheodory representation of positive definite Toeplitz covariance matrices. The Caratheodory decomposition parameterizes the covariance using a combination of steering vectors with different frequencies and amplitudes. Our first result shows that fixed-grid amplitude optimization is fundamentally insufficient. Even in the population setting, and even with arbitrarily many fixed frequency grid points, amplitude-only optimization can have a strictly positive error floor under grid mismatch. This motivates optimizing both amplitudes and frequencies. In this case, our main theoretical result proves that the joint optimization has a benign population landscape: every stationary point that produces a positive definite covariance matrix recovers the true Toeplitz covariance. These findings suggest a simple interpretation of the Toeplitz covariance problem: the population landscape is globally benign, but may be highly ill-conditioned. In our numerical experiments, overparameterization improves convergence speed and finite-sample accuracy. In particular, it allows simple gradient descent to approach the Cramer Rao bound while keeping the implementation simple.

协方差估计非凸优化信号处理

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。