A survey of Monte Carlo methods for parameter estimation Articles uri icon

authors

  • LUENGO GARCIA, DAVID
  • MARTINO, LUCA
  • FERNANDEZ BUGALLO, MONICA
  • ELVIRA ARREGUI, VICTOR
  • SÄRKKÄ, SIMO

publication date

  • May 2020

start page

  • 1

end page

  • 62

issue

  • 25

volume

  • 2020

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1687-6172

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1687-6180

abstract

  • Statistical signal processing applications usually require the estimation of some parameters of interest given a set of observed data. These estimates are typically obtained either by solving a multi-variate optimization problem, as in the maximum likelihood (ML) or maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimators, or by performing a multi-dimensional integration, as in the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) estimators. Unfortunately, analytical expressions for these estimators cannot be found in most real-world applications, and the Monte Carlo (MC) methodology is one feasible approach. MC methods proceed by drawing random samples, either from the desired distribution or from a simpler one, and using them to compute consistent estimators. The most important families of MC algorithms are the Markov chain MC (MCMC) and importance sampling (IS). On the one hand, MCMC methods draw samples from a proposal density, building then an ergodic Markov chain whose stationary distribution is the desired distribution by accepting or rejecting those candidate samples as the new state of the chain. On the other hand, IS techniques draw samples from a simple proposal density and then assign them suitable weights that measure their quality in some appropriate way. In this paper, we perform a thorough review of MC methods for the estimation of static parameters in signal processing applications. A historical note on the development of MC schemes is also provided, followed by the basic MC method and a brief description of the rejection sampling (RS) algorithm, as well as three sections describing many of the most relevant MCMC and IS algorithms, and their combined use. Finally, five numerical examples (including the estimation of the parameters of a chaotic system, a localization problem in wireless sensor networks and a spectral analysis application) are provided in order to demonstrate the performance of the described approaches.

subjects

  • Statistics

keywords

  • statistical signal processing; bayesian inference; monte carlo methods; metropolis-hastings algorithm; gibbs sampler, mh-within-gibbs; adaptive mcmc; importance sampling; population monte carlo