Approximation of the I-divergence between stationary and hidden Markov processes
Lorenzo Finesso, Angela Grassi, Peter Spreij · 2008
Abstract. We aim at the construction of a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) of assigned complexity (number of states of the underlying Markov chain) which best approximates, in Kullback-Leibler divergence rate, a given stationary process. We establish, under mild conditions, the existence of the divergence rate between a stationary process and an HMM. Since in general there is no analytic expression available for this divergence rate, we approximate it with a properly defined, and easily computable, divergence between Hankel matrices, which we propose as an approximation criterion.