In this paper, using Band matrix, a method has been proposed to estimating the covariance matrix of the ARMA model and the likelihood function of the ARMA model with diagonal covariance matrix has been obtained and approximations for Kullback-Leibler and Chernoff criteria were presented. In addition, two rules for discriminating the ARMA models has been proposed. A simulation and real data sets are used to illustrate the performance of the proposed rules. Significant reduction of the calculations for large time series and low discrimination error rate are two characteristics of the proposed rules. In addition no need to normal assumption is showed in a theorem.