Complex Wishart distribution

In statistics, the complex Wishart distribution is a complex version of the Wishart distribution. It is the distribution of times the sample Hermitian covariance matrix of zero-mean independent Gaussian random variables. It has support for Hermitian positive definite matrices.[1]

Complex Wishart
Notation A ~ CWp(, n)
Parameters n > p − 1 degrees of freedom (real)
> 0 (p × p Hermitian pos. def)
Support A (p × p) Hermitian positive definite matrix
PDF

Mean
Mode for np + 1
CF

The complex Wishart distribution is the density of a complex-valued sample covariance matrix. Let

where each is an independent column p-vector of random complex Gaussian zero-mean samples and is an Hermitian (complex conjugate) transpose. If the covariance of G is then

where is the complex central Wishart distribution with n degrees of freedom and mean value, or scale matrix, M.

where

is the complex multivariate Gamma function.[2]

Using the trace rotation rule we also get

which is quite close to the complex multivariate pdf of G itself. The elements of G conventionally have circular symmetry such that .

Inverse Complex Wishart The distribution of the inverse complex Wishart distribution of according to Goodman,[2] Shaman[3] is

where .

If derived via a matrix inversion mapping, the result depends on the complex Jacobian determinant

Goodman and others[4] discuss such complex Jacobians.

Eigenvalues

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The probability distribution of the eigenvalues of the complex Hermitian Wishart distribution are given by, for example, James[5] and Edelman.[6] For a   matrix with   degrees of freedom we have

 

where

 

Note however that Edelman uses the "mathematical" definition of a complex normal variable   where iid X and Y each have unit variance and the variance of  . For the definition more common in engineering circles, with X and Y each having 0.5 variance, the eigenvalues are reduced by a factor of 2.

While this expression gives little insight, there are approximations for marginal eigenvalue distributions. From Edelman we have that if S is a sample from the complex Wishart distribution with   such that   then in the limit   the distribution of eigenvalues converges in probability to the Marchenko–Pastur distribution function

 

This distribution becomes identical to the real Wishart case, by replacing   by  , on account of the doubled sample variance, so in the case  , the pdf reduces to the real Wishart one:

 

A special case is  

 

or, if a Var(Z) = 1 convention is used then

 .

The Wigner semicircle distribution arises by making the change of variable   in the latter and selecting the sign of y randomly yielding pdf

 

In place of the definition of the Wishart sample matrix above,  , we can define a Gaussian ensemble

 

such that S is the matrix product  . The real non-negative eigenvalues of S are then the modulus-squared singular values of the ensemble   and the moduli of the latter have a quarter-circle distribution.

In the case   such that   then   is rank deficient with at least   null eigenvalues. However the singular values of   are invariant under transposition so, redefining  , then   has a complex Wishart distribution, has full rank almost certainly, and eigenvalue distributions can be obtained from   in lieu, using all the previous equations.

In cases where the columns of   are not linearly independent and   remains singular, a QR decomposition can be used to reduce G to a product like

 

such that   is upper triangular with full rank and   has further reduced dimensionality.

The eigenvalues are of practical significance in radio communications theory since they define the Shannon channel capacity of a   MIMO wireless channel which, to first approximation, is modeled as a zero-mean complex Gaussian ensemble.

References

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  1. ^ N. R. Goodman (1963). "The distribution of the determinant of a complex Wishart distributed matrix". The Annals of Mathematical Statistics. 34 (1): 178–180. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177704251.
  2. ^ a b Goodman, N R (1963). "Statistical analysis based on a certain multivariate complex Gaussian distribution (an introduction)". Ann. Math. Statist. 34: 152–177. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177704250.
  3. ^ Shaman, Paul (1980). "The Inverted Complex Wishart Distribution and Its Application to Spectral Estimation". Journal of Multivariate Analysis. 10: 51–59. doi:10.1016/0047-259X(80)90081-0.
  4. ^ Cross, D J (May 2008). "On the Relation between Real and Complex Jacobian Determinants" (PDF). drexel.edu.
  5. ^ James, A. T. (1964). "Distributions of Matrix Variates and Latent Roots Derived from Normal Samples". Ann. Math. Statist. 35 (2): 475–501. doi:10.1214/aoms/1177703550.
  6. ^ Edelman, Alan (October 1988). "Eigenvalues and Condition Numbers of Random Matrices" (PDF). SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl. 9 (4): 543–560. doi:10.1137/0609045. hdl:1721.1/14322.