Use Your Powers Wisely: Resource Allocation in Parallel Channels

This study evaluates various resource allocation strategies for simultaneous estimation of two independent signals from noisy observations. We focus on strategies that make use of the underlying dynamics of each signal, exploiting the difference in estimation uncertainty between them. This evaluation is done empirically, by exploring the parameter space through computer simulations. Two cases are studied: one in which an initial allocation is maintained during estimation of the variables, and one in which allocation can be dynamically changed at each time step according to the uncertainty of the estimate from each channel. The results suggest that there are conditions in which it is advantageous to assign a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to only one of the signals and guess the other one. Furthermore, comparison between the two allocation strategies shows that the dynamic strategy significantly improves estimation performance in low SNR scenarios when the signals have similar dynamics.