Forgetting of the initial distribution for nonergodic Hidden Markov Chains

Randal Douc, Élisabeth Gassiat, Benoit Landelle, Éric Moulines · The Annals of Applied Probability · 2010

In this paper, the forgetting of the initial distribution for a nonergodic Hidden Markov Models (HMM) is studied. A new set of conditions is proposed to establish the forgetting property of the filter. Both a pathwise and mean convergence of the total variation distance of the filter started from two different initial distributions are obtained. The results are illustrated using a generic nonergodic state-space model for which both pathwise and mean exponential stability is established.

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