Stability of the Levinson algorithm for Toeplitz-like Systems

Numerical stability of the Levinson algorithm, generalized for Toeplitz- like systems, is studied. Arguments based on the analytic results of an error analysis for floating point arithmetic produce an upper bound on the norm of the residual vector, which grows exponentially with respect to the size of the problem. The base of such an exponential function can be small for diagonally dominant Toeplitz-like matrices. Numerical experiments show that, for these matrices, Gaussian elimination by row and the Levinson algorithm have residuals of the same order of magnitude. As expected, the empirical results point out that the theoretical bound is too pessimistic