Bootstrap bandwidth selection for the pair correlation function of inhomogeneous spatial point processes

Abstract

This work focuses on kernel estimation of the pair correlation function (PCF) for inhomogeneous spatial point processes. We propose a bootstrap bandwidth selector based on minimizing the mean integrated squared error (MISE). The variance term is estimated by nonparametric bootstrap, and the bias by a plug-in approach using a pilot estimator of the PCF. Kernel estimators of the PCF also require a pilot estimator of the first-order intensity. We test the performance of the bandwidth selector and the role of the pilot intensity estimator in a simulation study. The bootstrap bandwidth selector is competitive with cross-validation procedures, but the contribution of the bandwidth parameter to the goodness-of-fit of the kernel PCF estimator is minor in comparison with that of the pilot intensity function. The data-based kernel intensity estimator leads to biased kernel PCF estimators, while both kernel and parametric covariate-based intensities provide accurate estimators of the PCF.