Improved MCMC Simulation for Low-Dimensional Multi-Modal Distributions

A Markov-chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithm samples a new point around the latest sample due to the Markov property, which prevents it from sampling from multi-modal distributions since the corresponding chain often fails to search entire support of the target distribution. In this paper, to overcome this problem, mode switching scheme is applied to the conventional MCMC algorithms. The algorithm separates the reducible Markov chain into several mutually exclusive classes and use mode switching scheme to increase mixing rate. Simulation results are given to illustrate the algorithm with promising results.