Balanced Least Squares: Linear model estimation with noisy inputs

This paper focuses on a linear model with noisy inputs in which the performance of the conventional Total Least Squares (TLS) approach is (maybe surprisingly) far from satisfactory. Under the typical Gaussian assumption, we obtain the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator of the system response. This estimator promotes a reasonable balance between the empirical and theoretical variances of the residual errors, which suggests the name of Balanced Least Squares (BLS). The solution of the associated optimization problem is based on its reformulation as a rank constrained semidefinite program (SDP), for which we show that the relaxation is tight with probability one. Both TLS and BLS can be seen as regularized LS estimators, but the (possibly negative) regularization in BLS is softer than its TLS counterpart, which avoids the inconsistency of TLS in our particular model.