Minimax Optimality of Shiryaev-Roberts Procedure for Quickest Drift Change Detection of a Brownian motion

Abstract

The problem of detecting a change in the drift of a Brownian motion is considered. The change point is assumed to have a modified exponential prior distribution with unknown parameters. A worst-case analysis with respect to these parameters is adopted leading to a min-max problem formulation. Analytical and numerical justifications are provided towards establishing that the Shiryaev-Roberts procedure with a specially designed starting point is exactly optimal for the proposed mathematical setup.