On convergence of covariance matrix of empirical Bayes hyper-parameter estimator

Regularized system identification has become the research frontier of system identification in the past decade.One related core subject is to study the convergence properties of various hyper-parameter estimators as the sample size goes to infinity.In this paper,we consider one commonly used hyper-parameter estimator,the empirical Bayes(EB).Its convergence in distribution has been studied,and the explicit expression of the covariance matrix of its limiting distribution has been given.However,what we are truly interested in are factors contained in the covariance matrix of the EB hyper-parameter estimator,and then,the convergence of its covariance matrix to that of its limiting distribution is required.In general,the convergence in distribution of a sequence of random variables does not necessarily guarantee the convergence of its covariance matrix.Thus,the derivation of such convergence is a necessary complement to our theoretical analysis about factors that influence the convergence properties of the EB hyper-parameter estimator.In this paper,we consider the regularized finite impulse response(FIR)model estimation with deterministic inputs,and show that the covariance matrix of the EB hyper-parameter estimator converges to that of its limiting distribution.Moreover,we run numerical simulations to demonstrate the efficacy of ourtheoretical results.