Functional Properties of the Ziv-Zakai bound with Arbitrary Inputs

Abstract: This paper explores the Ziv-Zakai bound (ZZB), which is a well-known Bayesian lower bound on the Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE). First, it is shown that the ZZB holds without any assumption on the distribution of the estimand, that is, the estimand does not necessarily need to have a probability density function. The ZZB is then further analyzed in the high-noise and low-noise regimes and shown to always tensorize. Finally, the tightness of the ZZB is investigated under several aspects, such as the number of hypotheses and the usefulness of the valley-filling function. In particular, a sufficient and necessary condition for the tightness of the bound with continuous inputs is provided, and it is shown that the bound is never tight for discrete input distributions with a support set that does not have an accumulation point at zero.