Barankin-Type Bound for Constrained Parameter Estimation

In constrained parameter estimation, the classical constrained Cram
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r–Rao bound (CCRB) and the recent Lehmann-unbiased CCRB (LU-CCRB) are lower bounds on the performance of mean-unbiased and Lehmann-unbiased estimators, respectively. Both the CCRB and the LU-CCRB require differentiability of the likelihood function, which can be a restrictive assumption. Additionally, these bounds are local bounds that are inappropriate for predicting the threshold phenomena of the constrained maximum likelihood (CML) estimator. The constrained Barankin-type bound (CBTB) is a nonlocal mean-squared-error (MSE) lower bound for constrained parameter estimation that does not require differentiability of the likelihood function. However, this bound requires a restrictive mean-unbiasedness condition in the constrained set. In this work, we propose the Lehmann-unbiased CBTB (LU-CBTB) on the weighted MSE (WMSE). This bound does not require differentiability of the likelihood function and assumes uniform Lehmann-unbiasedness, which is less restrictive than the CBTB uniform mean-unbiasedness. We show that the LU-CBTB is tighter than or equal to the LU-CCRB and coincides with the CBTB for linear constraints. For nonlinear constraints the LU-CBTB and the CBTB are different and the LU-CBTB can be a lower bound on the WMSE of constrained estimators in cases, where the CBTB is not. In the simulations, we consider direction-of-arrival estimation of an unknown constant modulus discrete signal. In this case, the likelihood function is not differentiable and constrained Cram
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r–Rao-type bounds do not exist, while CBTBs exist. It is shown that the LU-CBTB better predicts the CML estimator performance than the CBTB, since the CML estimator is Lehmann-unbiased but not mean-unbiased.