Online Learning of Kalman Filtering: From Output to State Estimation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ye, Lintao, Zhang, Ankang, Chi, Ming, Du, Bin, Hu, Jianghai
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Ye, Lintao
Zhang, Ankang
Chi, Ming
Du, Bin
Hu, Jianghai
author_facet Ye, Lintao
Zhang, Ankang
Chi, Ming
Du, Bin
Hu, Jianghai
contents In this paper, we study the problem of learning Kalman filtering with unknown system model in partially observed linear dynamical systems. We propose a unified algorithmic framework based on online optimization that can be used to solve both the output estimation and state estimation scenarios. By exploring the properties of the estimation error cost functions, such as conditionally strong convexity, we show that our algorithm achieves a $\log T$-regret in the horizon length $T$ for the output estimation scenario. More importantly, we tackle the more challenging scenario of learning Kalman filtering for state estimation, which is an open problem in the literature. We first characterize a fundamental limitation of the problem, demonstrating the impossibility of any algorithm to achieve sublinear regret in $T$. By further introducing a random query scheme into our algorithm, we show that a $\sqrt{T}$-regret is achievable when rendering the algorithm limited query access to more informative measurements of the system state in practice. Our algorithm and regret readily capture the trade-off between the number of queries and the achieved regret, and shed light on online learning problems with limited observations. We validate the performance of our algorithms using numerical examples.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_27159
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Online Learning of Kalman Filtering: From Output to State Estimation
Ye, Lintao
Zhang, Ankang
Chi, Ming
Du, Bin
Hu, Jianghai
Machine Learning
Systems and Control
Optimization and Control
In this paper, we study the problem of learning Kalman filtering with unknown system model in partially observed linear dynamical systems. We propose a unified algorithmic framework based on online optimization that can be used to solve both the output estimation and state estimation scenarios. By exploring the properties of the estimation error cost functions, such as conditionally strong convexity, we show that our algorithm achieves a $\log T$-regret in the horizon length $T$ for the output estimation scenario. More importantly, we tackle the more challenging scenario of learning Kalman filtering for state estimation, which is an open problem in the literature. We first characterize a fundamental limitation of the problem, demonstrating the impossibility of any algorithm to achieve sublinear regret in $T$. By further introducing a random query scheme into our algorithm, we show that a $\sqrt{T}$-regret is achievable when rendering the algorithm limited query access to more informative measurements of the system state in practice. Our algorithm and regret readily capture the trade-off between the number of queries and the achieved regret, and shed light on online learning problems with limited observations. We validate the performance of our algorithms using numerical examples.
title Online Learning of Kalman Filtering: From Output to State Estimation
topic Machine Learning
Systems and Control
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27159