A Statistical Test for Impropriety of Complex Random Signals

A complex random vector is called improper if it is correlated with its complex conjugate. In this paper, we present a generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) for impropriety. This test is compelling because it displays the right invariances: The proposed GLR is invariant to linear transformations on the data, including rotation and scaling, just as propriety is preserved by linear transformations. Because canonical correlations make up a complete, or maximal, set of invariants for the Hermitian and complementary covariance matrices under linear transformations, the GLR can be shown to be a function of the squared canonical correlations between the data and its complex conjugate. This validates our intuition that the internal coordinate system should not matter for this hypothesis test