Efficient particle-based online smoothing in general hidden Markov models

This paper deals with the problem of estimating expectations of sums of additive functionals under the joint smoothing distribution in general hidden Markov models. Computing such expectations is a key ingredient in any kind of expectation-maximization-based parameter inference in models of this sort. The paper presents a computationally efficient algorithm for online estimation of these expectations in a forward manner. The proposed algorithm has a linear computational complexity in the number of particles and does not require old particles and weights to be stored during the computations. The algorithm avoids completely the well-known particle path degeneracy problem of the standard forward smoother. This makes it highly applicable within the framework of online expectation-maximization methods. The simulations show that the proposed algorithm provides the same precision as existing algorithms at a considerably lower computational cost.