Compound Poisson process

From HandWiki

A compound Poisson process is a continuous-time stochastic process with jumps. The jumps arrive randomly according to a Poisson process and the size of the jumps is also random, with a specified probability distribution. To be precise, a compound Poisson process, parameterised by a rate λ>0 and jump size distribution G, is a process {Y(t):t0} given by

Y(t)=i=1N(t)Di

where, {N(t):t0} is the counting variable of a Poisson process with rate λ, and {Di:i1} are independent and identically distributed random variables, with distribution function G, which are also independent of {N(t):t0}.

When Di are non-negative integer-valued random variables, then this compound Poisson process is known as a stuttering Poisson process.

Properties of the compound Poisson process

The expected value of a compound Poisson process can be calculated using a result known as Wald's equation as:

E(Y(t))=E(D1++DN(t))=E(N(t))E(D1)=E(N(t))E(D)=λtE(D).

Making similar use of the law of total variance, the variance can be calculated as:

var(Y(t))=E(var(Y(t)N(t)))+var(E(Y(t)N(t)))=E(N(t)var(D))+var(N(t)E(D))=var(D)E(N(t))+E(D)2var(N(t))=var(D)λt+E(D)2λt=λt(var(D)+E(D)2)=λtE(D2).

Lastly, using the law of total probability, the moment generating function can be given as follows:

Pr(Y(t)=i)=nPr(Y(t)=iN(t)=n)Pr(N(t)=n)
E(esY)=iesiPr(Y(t)=i)=iesinPr(Y(t)=iN(t)=n)Pr(N(t)=n)=nPr(N(t)=n)iesiPr(Y(t)=iN(t)=n)=nPr(N(t)=n)iesiPr(D1+D2++Dn=i)=nPr(N(t)=n)MD(s)n=nPr(N(t)=n)enln(MD(s))=MN(t)(ln(MD(s)))=eλt(MD(s)1).

Exponentiation of measures

Let N, Y, and D be as above. Let μ be the probability measure according to which D is distributed, i.e.

μ(A)=Pr(DA).

Let δ0 be the trivial probability distribution putting all of the mass at zero. Then the probability distribution of Y(t) is the measure

exp(λt(μδ0))

where the exponential exp(ν) of a finite measure ν on Borel subsets of the real line is defined by

exp(ν)=n=0ν*nn!

and

ν*n=ν**νn factors

is a convolution of measures, and the series converges weakly.

See also

de:Poisson-Prozess#Zusammengesetzte Poisson-Prozesse