Second-Order Asymptotics of Sequential Hypothesis Testing

We consider the classical sequential binary hypothesis testing problem in which there are two hypotheses governed respectively by distributions $P_0$ and $P_1$ and we would like to decide which hypothesis is true using a sequential test. It is known from the work of Wald and Wolfowitz that as the expectation of the length of the test grows, the optimal type-I and type-II error exponents approach the relative entropies $D(P_1\|P_0)$ and $D(P_0\|P_1)$. We refine this result by considering the optimal backoff---or second-order asymptotics---from the corner point of the achievable exponent region $(D(P_1\|P_0),D(P_0\|P_1))$ under two different constraints on the length of the test (or the sample size). First, we consider a probabilistic constraint in which the probability that the length of test exceeds a prescribed integer $n$ is less than a certain threshold $0<\varepsilon <1$. Second, the expectation of the sample size is bounded by $n$. In both cases, and under mild conditions, the second-order asymptotics is characterized exactly. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate our results.

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