Stochastic approximation with ‘bad’ noise

Stability and convergence properties of stochastic approximation algorithms are analyzed when the noise includes a long range dependent component (modeled by a fractional Brownian motion) and a heavy tailed component (modeled by a symmetric stable process), in addition to the usual `martingale noise'. This is motivated by the emergent applications in communications. The proofs are based on comparing suitably interpolated iterates with a limiting ordinary differential equation. Related issues such as asynchronous implementations, Markov noise, etc. are briefly discussed.