Adaptive Wrapped Robust Canonical Correlation Analysis in High-Dimensional Data

Abstract

Classical canonical correlation analysis becomes numerically unstable when the number of variables is large relative to the sample size and is sensitive to contamination in observations or individual cells. This study develops an integrated robust and regularized procedure that combines bounded cellwise wrapping, shrinkage estimation of the joint correlation matrix, and robust reweighting in a low-dimensional canonical score space. The resulting observation weights enter a second regularized canonical correlation fit, so the final estimator remains well defined when the combined number of variables exceeds the sample size. The simulation study shows that relative estimation accuracy depends on the signal strength, contamination mechanism, and dimensional configuration. The proposed estimator is competitive in several moderate-signal settings and has a clear computational advantage, whereas the minimum regularized covariance determinant plug-in estimator provides lower estimation error in many high-signal configurations. An additional ultra-high-dimensional experiment demonstrates numerical feasibility with modest memory use but also reveals substantial attenuation, identifying a limitation of the present dense estimator. The results therefore support a regime-dependent interpretation rather than a claim of uniform superiority. The complete reproducible simulation workflow is provided.