Asymptotic Equivalence for Nonparametric Generalized Linear Models

We establish that a non-Gaussian nonparametric regression model is asymptotically equivalent to a regression model with Gaussian noise. The approximation is in the sense of Le Cam's deficiency distance $\Delta$; the models are then asymptotically equivalent for all purposes of statistical decision with bounded loss. Our result concerns a sequence of independent but not identically distributed observations with each distribution in the same real-indexed exponential family. The canonical parameter is a value $f(t_i)$ of a regression function $f$ at a grid point $t_i$ (nonparametric GLM). When $f$ is in a H\"{o}lder ball with exponent $\beta >\frac 12 ,$ we establish global asymptotic equivalence to observations of a signal $\Gamma (f(t))$ in Gaussian white noise, where $\Gamma$ is related to a variance stabilizing transformation in the exponential family. The result is a regression analog of the recently established Gaussian approximation for the i.i.d. model. The proof is based on a functional version of the Hungarian construction for the partial sum process.