Reduced-rank estimation for ill-conditioned stochastic linear model with high signal-to-noise ratio

Abstract Reduced-rank approach has been used for decades in robust linear estimation of both deterministic and random vector of parameters in linear model y = H x + ϵ n . In practical settings, estimation is frequently performed under incomplete or inexact model knowledge, which in the stochastic case significantly increases mean-square-error (MSE) of an estimate obtained by the linear minimum mean-square-error (MMSE) estimator, which is MSE-optimal among linear estimators in the theoretical case of perfect model knowledge. However, the improved performance of reduced-rank estimators over MMSE estimator in estimation under incomplete or inexact model knowledge has been established to date only by means of numerical simulations and arguments indicating that the reduced-rank approach may provide improved performance over MMSE estimator in certain settings. In this paper we focus on the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) case, which has not been previously considered as a natural area of application of reduced-rank estimators. We first show explicit sufficient conditions under which familiar reduced-rank MMSE and truncated SVD estimators achieve lower MSE than MMSE estimator if singular values of array response matrix H are perturbed. We then extend these results to the case of a generic perturbation of array response matrix H, and demonstrate why MMSE estimator frequently attains higher MSE than reduced-rank MMSE and truncated SVD estimators if H is ill-conditioned. The main results of this paper are verified in numerical simulations.