Noise enhancement in robust estimation of location

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the noise benefits to maximum likelihood type estimators (M-estimator) for the robust estimation of a location parameter. Two distinct noise benefits are shown to be accessible under these conditions. With symmetric heavy-tailed noise distributions, the asymptotic efficiency of the estimation can be enhanced by injecting extra noise into the M-estimators. With an asymmetric contaminated noise model having a convex cumulative distribution function, we demonstrate that addition of noise can reduce the maximum bias of the median estimator. These findings extend the analysis of stochastic resonance effects for noise-enhanced signal and information processing.