Integral representations of increments of stochastic processes

Abstract

A formulation is presented in which the increment of a stochastic process is represented as an integral of the derivative of the process. It is shown that this representation is an alternative to the more common approach of writing equations for the differentials of stochastic processes. A possible advantage of the integral formulation is that its reliance on derivatives, rather than differentials, makes the operations of stochastic calculus more closely resemble those of ordinary deterministic calculus. This similarity to well-known mathematics may serve to make stochastic calculus accessible to a broader audience than in the past. The integral formulation is herein shown to be compatible with the Ito differential rule for non-Gaussian processes and is used to describe the increment of the nonstationary response of a system governed by a vector stochastic equation with parametric delta-correlated excitation.