The empirical characteristic function replaces the expected value in a characteristic function by the sample average:
Its centered fluctuation at the central limit theorem scale is the empirical characteristic process:
In particular, and .
Fix . Put and form the centered real vectors
They are bounded independent and identically distributed random variables, so the multivariate central limit theorem applies to .
To identify its limiting covariance matrix, put . Its complex covariance and pseudo-covariance are respectively
For , and . Thus
The two conditions on identify exactly this real covariance matrix: the second is , with a conjugate in its second argument. A centered multivariate normal distribution is determined by its covariance matrix, including when that matrix is singular. Therefore
This proves convergence in distribution at each fixed ; it does not assert convergence of the entire empirical characteristic process.