  We consider the problem of joint estimation of structured covariance
matrices. Assuming the structure is unknown, estimation is achieved using
heterogeneous training sets. Namely, given groups of measurements coming from
centered populations with different covariances, our aim is to determine the
mutual structure of these covariance matrices and estimate them. Supposing that
the covariances span a low dimensional affine subspace in the space of
symmetric matrices, we develop a new efficient algorithm discovering the
structure and using it to improve the estimation. Our technique is based on the
application of principal component analysis in the matrix space. We also derive
an upper performance bound of the proposed algorithm in the Gaussian scenario
and compare it with the Cramer-Rao lower bound. Numerical simulations are
presented to illustrate the performance benefits of the proposed method.
