Stochastic sampling algorithms for state estimation of jump Markov linear systems

Jump Markov linear systems are linear systems whose parameters evolve with time according to a finite-state Markov chain. Given a set of observations, our aim is to estimate the states of the finite-state Markov chain and the continuous (in space) states of the linear system. The computational cost in computing conditional mean or maximum a posteriori (MAP) state estimates of the Markov chain or the state of the jump Markov linear system grows exponentially in the number of observations. In this paper, we present three globally convergent algorithms based on stochastic sampling methods for state estimation of jump Markov linear systems. The cost per iteration is linear in the data length. The first proposed algorithm is a data augmentation (DA) scheme that yields conditional mean state estimates. The second proposed scheme is a stochastic annealing (SA) version of DA that computes the joint MAP sequence estimate of the finite and continuous states. Finally, a Metropolis–Hastings DA scheme based on SA is designed to yield the MAP estimate of the finite-state Markov chain is proposed. Convergence results of the three above-mentioned stochastic algorithms are obtained. Computer simulations are carried out to evaluate the performances of the proposed algorithms. The problem of estimating a sparse signal developing from a neutron sensor based on a set of noisy data from a neutron sensor and the problem of narrowband interference suppression in spread spectrum code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems are considered.