An innovations approach to least-squares estimation--Part I: Linear filtering in additive white noise

The innovations approach to linear least-squares approximation problems is first to "whiten" the observed data by a causal and invertible operation, and then to treat the resulting simpler white-noise observations problem. This technique was successfully used by Bode and Shannon to obtain a simple derivation of the classical Wiener filtering problem for stationary processes over a semi-infinite interval. Here we shall extend the technique to handle nonstationary continuous-time processes over finite intervals. In Part I we shall apply this method to obtain a simple derivation of the Kalman-Bucy recursive filtering formulas (for both continuous-time and discrete-time processes) and also some minor generalizations thereof.