Distributionally Robust Kalman Filtering over Finite and Infinite Horizon

TL;DR

This paper develops a distributionally robust Kalman filtering framework that handles correlated disturbances over finite and infinite horizons, providing computationally feasible algorithms and demonstrating practical effectiveness.

Contribution

It introduces a novel robust filtering approach that removes iid assumptions, characterizes the infinite horizon estimator via KKT conditions, and offers practical algorithms for implementation.

Findings

Finite horizon problem reduces to SDP with scalable complexity.

Infinite horizon estimator characterized by KKT conditions.

Algorithms effectively approximate the optimal filter in practice.

Abstract

This paper investigates the distributionally robust filtering of signals generated by state-space models driven by exogenous disturbances with noisy observations in finite and infinite horizon scenarios. The exact joint probability distribution of the disturbances and noise is unknown but assumed to reside within a Wasserstein-2 ambiguity ball centered around a given nominal distribution. We aim to derive a causal estimator that minimizes the worst-case mean squared estimation error among all possible distributions within this ambiguity set. We remove the iid restriction in prior works by permitting arbitrarily time-correlated disturbances and noises. In the finite horizon setting, we reduce this problem to a semi-definite program (SDP), with computational complexity scaling with the time horizon. For infinite horizon settings, we characterize the optimal estimator using Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. Although the optimal estimator lacks a rational form, i.e., a finite-dimensional state-space realization, it can be fully described by a finite-dimensional parameter. {Leveraging this parametrization, we propose efficient algorithms that compute the optimal estimator with arbitrary fidelity in the frequency domain.} Moreover, given any finite degree, we provide an efficient convex optimization algorithm that finds the finite-dimensional state-space estimator that best approximates the optimal non-rational filter in ${\cal H}_\infty$ norm. This facilitates the practical implementation of the infinite horizon filter without having to grapple with the ill-scaled SDP from finite time. Finally, numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in practical scenarios.