System Identification Under Bounded Noise: Optimal Rates Beyond Least Squares

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zeng, Xiong, Yu, Jing, Ozay, Necmiye
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Zeng, Xiong
Yu, Jing
Ozay, Necmiye
author_facet Zeng, Xiong
Yu, Jing
Ozay, Necmiye
contents System identification is a fundamental problem in control and learning, particularly in high-stakes applications where data efficiency is critical. Classical approaches, such as the ordinary least squares estimator (OLS), achieve an $O(1/\sqrt{T})$ convergence rate under Gaussian noise assumptions, where $T$ is the number of samples. This rate has been shown to match the lower bound. However, in many practical scenarios, noise is known to be bounded, opening the possibility of improving sample complexity. In this work, we establish the minimax lower bound for system identification under bounded noise, proving that the $O(1/T)$ convergence rate is indeed optimal. We further demonstrate that OLS remains limited to an $Ω(1/\sqrt{T})$ convergence rate, making it fundamentally suboptimal in the presence of bounded noise. Finally, we instantiate two natural variations of OLS that obtain the optimal sample complexity.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_16817
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle System Identification Under Bounded Noise: Optimal Rates Beyond Least Squares
Zeng, Xiong
Yu, Jing
Ozay, Necmiye
Systems and Control
System identification is a fundamental problem in control and learning, particularly in high-stakes applications where data efficiency is critical. Classical approaches, such as the ordinary least squares estimator (OLS), achieve an $O(1/\sqrt{T})$ convergence rate under Gaussian noise assumptions, where $T$ is the number of samples. This rate has been shown to match the lower bound. However, in many practical scenarios, noise is known to be bounded, opening the possibility of improving sample complexity. In this work, we establish the minimax lower bound for system identification under bounded noise, proving that the $O(1/T)$ convergence rate is indeed optimal. We further demonstrate that OLS remains limited to an $Ω(1/\sqrt{T})$ convergence rate, making it fundamentally suboptimal in the presence of bounded noise. Finally, we instantiate two natural variations of OLS that obtain the optimal sample complexity.
title System Identification Under Bounded Noise: Optimal Rates Beyond Least Squares
topic Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16817