Continuous-time DC kernel - A stable generalized first order spline kernel

The stable spline (SS) kernel and the diagonal correlated (DC) kernel are two kernels that have been applied and studied extensively for kernel-based regularized LTI system identification. In this note, we show that similar to the derivation of the SS kernel, the continuous-time DC kernel can be derived by applying the same “stable” coordinate change to a “generalized” first-order spline kernel, and thus can be interpreted as a stable generalized first-order spline kernel. This interpretation provides new facets to understand the properties of the DC kernel. In particular, we derive a new orthonormal basis expansion of the DC kernel, and the explicit expression of the norm of the RKHS associated with the DC kernel. Moreover, for the non-uniformly sampled DC kernel, we derive its maximum entropy property and show that its kernel matrix has tridiagonal inverse.