Robust Semiparametric Efficient Estimators in Complex Elliptically Symmetric Distributions

Covariance matrices play a major role in statistics, signal processing and machine learning applications. This paper focuses on the semi-parametric covariance/scatter matrix estimation problem in elliptical distributions. The class of elliptical distributions can be seen as a semiparametric model where the finite-dimensional vector of interest is given by the location vector and by the (vectorized) covariance/scatter matrix, while the density generator represents an infinite-dimensional nuisance function. The main aim of this work is then to provide possible estimators of the finite-dimensional parameter vector able to reconcile the two dichotomic concepts of robustness and (semiparametric) efficiency. An R-estimator satisfying these requirements has been recently proposed by Hallin, Oja and Paindaveine for real-valued elliptical data by exploiting the Le Cam's theory of one-step efficient estimators and the rank-based statistics. In this paper, we firstly recall the building blocks underlying the derivation of such real-valued R-estimator, then its extension to complex-valued data is proposed. Moreover, through numerical simulations, its estimation performance and robustness to outliers are investigated in a finite-sample regime.