A smoothness priors long AR model method for spectral estimation

A new smoothness priors long AR model method approach is taken to the short data span spectral estimation problem. An autoregressive (AR) model that is relatively long compared to the data length is considered. The smoothness priors are in the form of the integrated squared derivatives of the AR model whitening filter. A smoothness tradeoff parameter or Bayesian hyperparameter balances the tradeoff between the infidelity of the AR model to the data and the infidelity of the model to the smoothness constraint. The critical computation of the likelihood of the hyperparameters of the Bayesian model is realized by a constrained least squares computation. Numerical examples are shown. The results of simulation studies using entropy comparison evaluations of the Bayesian and minimum AIC-AR methods of spectral estimation are also shown.