Improved Shrinkage Estimator of Large-Dimensional Covariance Matrix under the Complex Gaussian Distribution

Estimating the covariance matrix of a random vector is essential and challenging in large dimension and small sample size scenarios. The purpose of this paper is to produce an outperformed large-dimensional covariance matrix estimator in the complex domain via the linear shrinkage regularization. Firstly, we develop a necessary moment property of the complex Wishart distribution. Secondly, by minimizing the mean squared error between the real covariance matrix and its shrinkage estimator, we obtain the optimal shrinkage intensity in a closed form for the spherical target matrix under the complex Gaussian distribution. Thirdly, we propose a newly available shrinkage estimator by unbiasedly estimating the unknown scalars involved in the optimal shrinkage intensity. Both the numerical simulations and an example application to array signal processing reveal that the proposed covariance matrix estimator performs well in large dimension and small sample size scenarios.