150 J. Bian et al. / Digital Signal Processing 48 (2016) 148–162
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we
study the LSEs and obtain the asymptotic distribution of the pa-
rameters
of frequencies, amplitudes and phases for the considered
model. The initial estimation of the iterative algorithm is presented
in Section 3. The iterative algorithm is presented in Section 4. In
Section 5, we present the numerical experiments and finally the
conclusion is presented in Section 6. All the proofs are provided in
Appendices A–C.
2. Least squares estimators
It is known that the LSEs have the best convergence rate for
parameters estimation of superimposed exponential signals or har-
monic
signals in additive noise when the observations are com-
plete
[26]. However, the LSEs for the parameters of superimposed
exponential signals with randomly missing observations have not
been studied. It is necessary to study the LSEs for parameters of
model (1) first. The LSEs of the unknown parameters of model
(1) can be obtained by minimizing the residual sum of squares
namely,
Q (
ˆ
θ ) =
N
t=1
y(t) −
l
k=1
ˆ
μ
k
(1 − p)e
i(
ˆ
ω
k
t+
ˆ
ϕ
k
)
2
(2)
where
ˆ
θ = (
ˆ
θ
1
,
ˆ
θ
2
, ···,
ˆ
θ
l
) is the LSEs of θ = (θ
1
, θ
2
, ···, θ
l
). Here
ˆ
θ
k
= (
ˆ
ω
k
,
ˆ
ϕ
k
,
ˆ
μ
k
), θ
k
= (ω
k
, ϕ
k
, μ
k
) (k = 1, 2, ···, l). It is noted
that the second term in the square sum of Eq. (2) is actu-
ally
the mean of y(t). If we denote the block diagonal matrix
D as D = diag{D
1
, D
2
, ···, D
l
} where the block element D
j
=
diag{N
3/2
, N
1/2
, N
1/2
}, for j = 1, 2, ···, l, then the asymptotic dis-
tribution
of the LSEs of θ can be obtained as follows.
Theorem
1. Under the assumption of model (1), (
ˆ
θ −θ )D converges in
distribution to a 3l-variate normal distribution, with mean vector zero
and the covariance matrix which is a block diagonal matrix with the
structure = diag{
1
,
2
, ···,
l
}, where
j
=
⎡
⎢
⎣
σ
2
−σ
2
j
+p
k=j
μ
2
k
(1−p)μ
2
j
6 −3
−32
0
0
σ
2
+σ
2
j
+p
k=j
μ
2
k
2(1−p)
⎤
⎥
⎦
( j = 1, 2, ···, l) and σ
2
=σ
2
0
+
l
k
=1
σ
2
k
which is the total variance of
multiplicative and additive noise.
Proof. See
Appendix A. 2
It is immediate from Theorem 1 that the LSE of the frequency
ω
j
( j = 1, 2, ···, l) has the following asymptotic distribution
N
3/2
(
ˆ
ω
j
−ω
j
)
L
−→ N
0,
6(σ
2
−σ
2
j
+ p
k=j
μ
2
k
)
(1 − p)μ
2
j
(3)
where ‘N (·)’ denotes normal distribution and ‘L ’ means conver-
gence
in distribution.
2
3. Initial estimator
The initial estimator for the frequencies of model (1) can be
obtained by maximizing the Lomb Periodogram function I(ω) as
follows
2
Here convergence in distribution means that for the continuous point t of the
distribution function of
ˆ
ω
j
, i.e. F
N
(t), lim
N→∞
F
N
(t) = F (t) where F (t) is the limit
distribution function of
ˆ
ω
j
.
I(ω) =
1
N
N
t=1
x(t)s(t)e
−iωt
.
(4)
The estimators obtained by finding p local maxima of I(ω) achieve
the best possible rate and are asymptotically equivalent to the
LSEs when there is no missing observation and is known as ap-
proximate
least squares estimators (ALSEs) in the literature [27].
If the values of the missing observations are taken as zeros, the
frequency can also be obtained by searching the peaks of the pe-
riodogram
maximizers, which is termed as Lomb periodogram es-
timation
[7]. We take the Lomb periodogram maximizers as the
initial estimator of the iterative algorithm. It is noted that the
Lomb periodogram estimators obtained under the condition that
frequencies are Fourier frequencies provide estimators with con-
vergence
rate only O
p
(N
−1
) [25]. Here a frequency is a Fourier
frequency if it is of the form λ =
2πk
N
, for some integer 1 ≤k ≤ N.
4. Iterative algorithm
In this section, we will discuss the iterative procedure and the
asymptotic property of the estimators of frequencies in model (1)
by
the iterative procedure below. Given a consistent estimator
˜
ω
j
of model (1), we compute
ˆ
ω
j
for j = 1, 2, ···, l as follows
ˆ
ω
j
=
˜
ω
j
+
f
s
N
2
Im
A
N
( j)
B
N
( j)
(5)
where
A
N
( j) =
N
t=1
y(t)(t −
N
2
)e
−i
˜
ω
j
t
, B
N
( j) =
N
t=1
y(t)e
−i
˜
ω
j
t
, (6)
f
s
=
N
3
(1 − p)
N
t
=1
s(t)t(t −
N
2
)
(7)
and Im[·] denotes the operation of taking the imaginary part of
a complex number. We can start with any consistent estimator
˜
ω
j
and improve it step by step using Eq. (5). The performance of the
estimators of frequencies for each iteration and the corresponding
asymptotic distribution are presented in the following theorem.
Theorem 2. If for j = 1, 2, ···, l,
˜
ω
j
− ω
j
= O
p
(N
−1−δ
), where δ ∈
(
0,
1
2
], then
(a)
ˆ
ω
j
−ω
j
= O
p
(N
−1−2δ
), if δ
1
4
,
(b) N
3
2
(
ˆ
ω − ω)
L
−−→ N
l
(0, ), if δ>
1
4
where
= diag
6(σ
2
−σ
2
1
+ p
k=1
μ
2
k
)
μ
2
1
(1 − p)
,
6(σ
2
−σ
2
2
+ p
k=2
μ
2
k
)
μ
2
2
(1 − p)
,
···,
6(σ
2
−σ
2
l
+ p
k=l
μ
2
k
)
μ
2
l
(1 − p)
and σ
2
=
l
j
=1
σ
2
j
+ σ
2
0
,
ˆ
ω = (
ˆ
ω
1
,
ˆ
ω
2
, ···,
ˆ
ω
l
), ω = (ω
1
, ω
2
,
···,
ω
l
).
Proof. See
Appendix B. 2
Remark 1. It is noted that the iterative statistics in Eq. (5) are
different from those in [21–23] as the coefficient f
s
in Eq. (5)
is
not fixed and it varies with different missing distributions of
time points in each iteration while the iterative coefficient used in
[21–23] is fixed to a constant. Moreover, the iterative coefficient in