'… dedicated mostly to graduate students and providing a rigorous and rather complete mathematical introduction to the theory of hidden Markov models as well as hidden semi-Markov models under main assumption that the hidden process is a finite state Markov chain. The semi-Markov models appear when the assumption that the length of time the chain spends in any state is geometrically distributed is relaxed. The authors carefully construct these processes on the canonical probability space and then derive filters and smoother, as well as the Viterbi estimates. The central role plays the EM Algorithm.' Jerzy Ombach, ZB Math Reviews
Preface; 1. Observed Markov chains; 2. Estimation of an observed Markov chain; 3. Hidden Markov models; 4. Filters and smoothers; 5. The Viterbi algorithm; 6. The EM algorithm; 7. A new Markov chain model; 8. Semi-Markov models; 9. Hidden semi-Markov models; 10. Filters for hidden semi-Markov models; Appendix A. Higher order chains; Appendix B. An example of a second order chain; Appendix C. A conditional Bayes theorem; Appendix D. On conditional expectations; Appendix E. Some molecular biology; Appendix F. Earlier applications of hidden Markov chain models; References; Index.