Problems of estimating nonnegative functions from nonnegative data induced by nonnegative mappings are ubiquitous in science and engineering. We address such problems by minimizing an information-theoretic discrepancy measure, namely Csiszar's I-divergence, between the collected data and hypothetical data induced by an estimate. Our applications can be summarized along the following three lines: 1) Deautocorrelation: Deautocorrelation involves recovering a function from its autocorrelation. Deautocorrelation can be interpreted as phase retrieval in that recovering a function from its autocorrelation is equivalent to retrieving Fourier phases from just the corresponding Fourier magnitudes. Schulz and Snyder invented an minimum I-divergence algorithm for phase retrieval. We perform a numerical study concerning the convergence of their algorithm to local minima. X-ray crystallography is a method for finding the interatomic structure of a crystallized molecule. X-ray crystallography problems can be viewed as deautocorrelation problems from aliased autocorrelations, due to the periodicity of the crystal structure. We derive a modified version of the Schulz-Snyder algorithm for application to crystallography. Furthermore, we prove that our tweaked version can theoretically preserve special symmorphic group symmetries that some crystals possess. We quantify noise impact via several error metrics as the signal-to-ratio changes. Furthermore, we propose penalty methods using Good's roughness and total variation for alleviating roughness in estimates caused by noise. 2) Deautoconvolution: Deautoconvolution involves finding a function from its autoconvolution. We derive an iterative algorithm that attempts to recover a function from its autoconvolution via minimizing I-divergence. Various theoretical properties of our deautoconvolution algorithm are derived. 3) Linear inverse problems: Various linear inverse problems can be described by the Fredholm integral equation of the first kind. We address two such problems via minimum I-divergence methods, namely the inverse blackbody radiation problem, and the problem of estimating an input distribution to a communication channel (particularly Rician channels) that would create a desired output. Penalty methods are proposed for dealing with the ill-posedness of the inverse blackbody problem.

The research in distributed algorithms is linked with the developments of statistical inference in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) applications. Typically, distributed approaches process the collected signals from networked sensor nodes. That is to say, the sensors receive local observations and transmit information between each other. Each sensor is capable of combining the collected information with its own observations to improve performance. In this thesis, we propose novel distributed methods for the inference applications using wireless sensor networks. In particular, the efficient algorithms which are not computationally intensive are investigated. Moreover, we present a number of novel algorithms for processing asynchronous network events and robust state estimation. In the first part of the thesis, a distributed adaptive algorithm based on the component-wise EM method for decentralized sensor networks is investigated. The distributed component-wise Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm has been designed for application in a Gaussian density estimation. The proposed algorithm operates a component-wise EM procedure for local parameter estimation and exploit an incremental strategy for network updating, which can provide an improved convergence rate. Numerical simulation results have illustrated the advantages of the proposed distributed component-wise EM algorithm for both well-separated and overlapped mixture densities. The distributed component-wise EM algorithm can outperform other EM-based distributed algorithms in estimating overlapping Gaussian mixtures. In the second part of the thesis, a diffusion based EM gradient algorithm for density estimation in asynchronous wireless sensor networks has been proposed. Specifically, based on the asynchronous adapt-then-combine diffusion strategy, a distributed EM gradient algorithm that can deal with asynchronous network events has been considered. The Bernoulli model has been exploited to approximate the asynchronous behaviour of the network. Compared with existing distributed EM based estimation methods using a consensus strategy, the proposed algorithm can provide more accurate estimates in the presence of asynchronous networks uncertainties, such as random link failures, random data arrival times, and turning on or off sensor nodes for energy conservation. Simulation experiments have been demonstrated that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the consensus based strategies in terms of Mean-Square- Deviation (MSD) performance in an asynchronous network setting. Finally, the challenge of distributed state estimation in power systems which requires low complexity and high stability in the presence of bad data for a large scale network is addressed. A gossip based quasi-Newton algorithm has been proposed for solving the power system state estimation problem. In particular, we have applied the quasi-Newton method for distributed state estimation under the gossip protocol. The proposed algorithm exploits the Broyden- Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) formula to approximate the Hessian matrix, thus avoiding the computation of inverse Hessian matrices for each control area. The simulation results for IEEE 14 bus system and a large scale 4200 bus system have shown that the distributed quasi-Newton scheme outperforms existing algorithms in terms of Mean-Square-Error (MSE) performance with bad data.

Le volume des données disponibles permettant de décrire l’environnement, en particulier l’atmosphère et les océans, s’est accru à un rythme exponentiel. Ces données regroupent des observations et des sorties de modèles numériques. Les observations (satellite, in situ, etc.) sont généralement précises mais sujettes à des erreurs de mesure et disponibles avec un échantillonnage spatio-temporel irrégulier qui rend leur exploitation directe difficile. L’amélioration de la compréhension des processus physiques associée à la plus grande capacité des ordinateurs ont permis des avancées importantes dans la qualité des modèles numériques. Les solutions obtenues ne sont cependant pas encore de qualité suffisante pour certaines applications et ces méthodes demeurent lourdes à mettre en œuvre. Filtrage et lissage (les méthodes d’assimilation de données séquentielles en pratique) sont développés pour abonder ces problèmes. Ils sont généralement formalisées sous la forme d’un modèle espace-état, dans lequel on distingue le modèle dynamique qui décrit l’évolution du processus physique (état), et le modèle d’observation qui décrit le lien entre le processus physique et les observations disponibles. Dans cette thèse, nous abordons trois problèmes liés à l’inférence statistique pour les modèles espace-états: reconstruction de l’état, estimation des paramètres et remplacement du modèle dynamique par un émulateur construit à partir de données. Pour le premier problème, nous introduirons tout d’abord un algorithme de lissage original qui combine les algorithmes Conditional Particle Filter (CPF) et Backward Simulation (BS). Cet algorithme CPF-BS permet une exploration efficace de l’état de la variable physique, en raffinant séquentiellement l’exploration autour des trajectoires qui respectent le mieux les contraintes du modèle dynamique et des observations. Nous montrerons sur plusieurs modèles jouets que, à temps de calcul égal, l’algorithme CPF-BS donne de meilleurs résultats que les autres CPF et l’algorithme EnKS stochastique qui est couramment utilisé dans les applications opérationnelles. Nous aborderons ensuite le problème de l’estimation des paramètres inconnus dans les modèles espace-état. L’algorithme le plus usuel en statistique pour estimer les paramètres d’un modèle espace-état est l’algorithme EM qui permet de calculer itérativement une approximation numérique des estimateurs du maximum de vraisemblance. Nous montrerons que les algorithmes EM et CPF-BS peuvent être combinés efficacement pour estimer les paramètres d’un modèle jouet. Pour certaines applications, le modèle dynamique est inconnu ou très coûteux à résoudre numériquement mais des observations ou des simulations sont disponibles. Il est alors possible de reconstruire l’état conditionnellement aux observations en utilisant des algorithmes de filtrage/lissage dans lesquels le modèle dynamique est remplacé par un émulateur statistique construit à partir des observations. Nous montrerons que les algorithmes EM et CPF-BS peuvent être adaptés dans ce cadre et permettent d’estimer de manière non-paramétrique le modèle dynamique de l’état à partir d'observations bruitées. Pour certaines applications, le modèle dynamique est inconnu ou très coûteux à résoudre numériquement mais des observations ou des simulations sont disponibles. Il est alors possible de reconstruire l’état conditionnellement aux observations en utilisant des algorithmes de filtrage/lissage dans lesquels le modèle dynamique est remplacé par un émulateur statistique construit à partir des observations. Nous montrerons que les algorithmes EM et CPF-BS peuvent être adaptés dans ce cadre et permettent d’estimer de manière non-paramétrique le modèle dynamique de l’état à partir d'observations bruitées. Enfin, les algorithmes proposés sont appliqués pour imputer les données de vent (produit par Météo France). / The amount of both observational and model-simulated data within the environmental, climate and ocean sciences has grown at an accelerating rate. Observational (e.g. satellite, in-situ...) data are generally accurate but still subject to observational errors and available with a complicated spatio-temporal sampling. Increasing computer power and understandings of physical processes have permitted to advance in models accuracy and resolution but purely model driven solutions may still not be accurate enough. Filtering and smoothing (or sequential data assimilation methods) have developed to tackle the issues. Their contexts are usually formalized under the form of a space-state model including the dynamical model which describes the evolution of the physical process (state), and the observation model which describes the link between the physical process and the available observations. In this thesis, we tackle three problems related to statistical inference for nonlinear state-space models: state reconstruction, parameter estimation and replacement of the dynamic model by an emulator constructed from data. For the first problem, we will introduce an original smoothing algorithm which combines the Conditional Particle Filter (CPF) and Backward Simulation (BS) algorithms. This CPF-BS algorithm allows for efficient exploration of the state of the physical variable, sequentially refining exploration around trajectories which best meet the constraints of the dynamic model and observations. We will show on several toy models that, at the same computation time, the CPF-BS algorithm gives better results than the other CPF algorithms and the stochastic EnKS algorithm which is commonly used in real applications. We will then discuss the problem of estimating unknown parameters in state-space models. The most common statistical algorithm for estimating the parameters of a space-state model is based on EM algorithm, which makes it possible to iteratively compute a numerical approximation of the maximum likelihood estimators. We will show that the EM and CPF-BS algorithms can be combined to effectively estimate the parameters in toy models. In some applications, the dynamical model is unknown or very expensive to solve numerically but observations or simulations are available. It is thence possible to reconstruct the state conditionally to the observations by using filtering/smoothing algorithms in which the dynamical model is replaced by a statistical emulator constructed from the observations. We will show that the EM and CPF-BS algorithms can be adapted in this framework and allow to provide non-parametric estimation of the dynamic model of the state from noisy observations. Finally the proposed algorithms are applied to impute wind data (produced by Méteo France).