How to ensure a positive definite covariance matrix?

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I'm trying to model correlated noise by defining a covariance matrix and multiplying the Cholesky decomposition of it by a vector containing uncorrelated noise. How can I ensure the covariance matrix is positive definite?

The covariance matrix I'm defining is banded, symmetric and contains all positive values. When I calculate the eigenvalues, some are very small but negative.

Thanks