In
.
Definition
Random measures can be defined as transition kernels or as random elements. Both definitions are equivalent. For the definitions, let be a separable complete metric space and let be its Borel -algebra. (The most common example of a separable complete metric space is )
As a transition kernel
A random measure is a (a.s.) locally finite transition kernel from a (abstract) probability space to .[3]
Being a transition kernel means that
- For any fixed , the mapping
- is measurable from to
- For every fixed , the mapping
- is a measure on
Being locally finite means that the measures
satisfy for all bounded measurable sets
and for all except some -null set
In the context of stochastic processes there is the related concept of a stochastic kernel, probability kernel, Markov kernel.
As a random element
Define
and the subset of locally finite measures by
For all bounded measurable , define the mappings
from to . Let be the -algebra induced by the mappings on and the -algebra induced by the mappings on . Note that .
A random measure is a random element from to that almost surely takes values in [3][4][5]
Basic related concepts
Intensity measure
For a random measure , the measure satisfying
for every positive measurable function is called the intensity measure of . The intensity measure exists for every random measure and is a s-finite measure.
Supporting measure
For a random measure , the measure satisfying
for all positive measurable functions is called the supporting measure of . The supporting measure exists for all random measures and can be chosen to be finite.
Laplace transform
For a random measure , the Laplace transform is defined as
for every positive measurable function .
Basic properties
Measurability of integrals
For a random measure , the integrals
and
for positive -measurable are measurable, so they are random variables.
Uniqueness
The distribution of a random measure is uniquely determined by the distributions of
for all continuous functions with compact support on . For a fixed semiring that generates in the sense that , the distribution of a random measure is also uniquely determined by the integral over all positive simple -measurable functions .[6]
Decomposition
A measure generally might be decomposed as:
Here is a diffuse measure without atoms, while is a purely atomic measure.
Random counting measure
A random measure of the form:
where is the Dirac measure, and are random variables, is called a point process[1][2] or random counting measure. This random measure describes the set of N particles, whose locations are given by the (generally vector valued) random variables . The diffuse component is null for a counting measure.
In the formal notation of above a random counting measure is a map from a probability space to the measurable space (, ) a measurable space. Here is the space of all boundedly finite integer-valued measures (called counting measures).
The definitions of expectation measure, Laplace functional, moment measures and stationarity for random measures follow those of
See also
References
- ^ . An authoritative but rather difficult reference.
- ^ A nice and clear introduction.
- ^ .
- .
- .
- .
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