This paper studies a difficult and fundamental problem that arises throughout electrical engineering, applied mathematics, and statistics. Suppose that one forms a short linear combination of elementary signals drawn from a large, fixed collection. Given an observation of the linear combination that has been contaminated with additive noise, the goal is to identify which elementary signals participated and to approximate their coefficients. Although many algorithms have been proposed, there is little theory which guarantees that these algorithms can accurately and efficiently solve the problem. This paper studies a method called convex relaxation, which attempts to recover the ideal sparse signal by solving a convex program. This approach is powerful because the optimization can be completed in polynomial time with standard scientific software. The paper provides general conditions which ensure that convex relaxation succeeds. As evidence of the broad impact of these results, the paper describes how convex relaxation can be used for several concrete signal recovery problems. It also describes applications to channel coding, linear regression, and numerical analysis.

Abstract. A simultaneous sparse approximation problem requests a good approximation of several input signals at once using different linear combinations of the same elementary signals. At the same time, the problem balances the error in approximation against the total number of elementary signals that participate. These elementary signals typically model coherent structures in the input signals, and they are chosen from a large, linearly dependent collection. The first part of this paper proposes a greedy pursuit algorithm, called Simultaneous Orthogonal Matching Pursuit, for simultaneous sparse approximation. Then it presents some numerical experiments that demonstrate how a sparse model for the input signals can be identified more reliably given several input signals. Afterward, the paper proves that the S-OMP algorithm can compute provably good solutions to several simultaneous sparse approximation problems. The second part of the paper develops another algorithmic approach called convex relaxation, and it provides theoretical results on the performance of convex relaxation for simultaneous sparse approximation. Date: Typeset on March 17, 2005. Key words and phrases. Greedy algorithms, Orthogonal Matching Pursuit, multiple measurement vectors, simultaneous

The data of interest are assumed to be represented as N-dimensional real vectors, and these vectors are compressible in some linear basis B, implying that the signal can be reconstructed accurately using only a small number M ≪ N of basis-function coefficients associated with B. Compressive sensing is a framework whereby one does not measure one of the aforementioned N-dimensional signals directly, but rather a set of related measurements, with the new measurements a linear combination of the original underlying N-dimensional signal. The number of required compressive-sensing measurements is typically much smaller than N, offering the potential to simplify the sensing system. Let f denote the unknown underlying N-dimensional signal, and g a vector of compressive-sensing measurements, then one may approximate f accurately by utilizing knowledge of the (under-determined) linear relationship between f and g, in addition to knowledge of the fact that f is compressible in B. In this paper we employ a Bayesian formalism for estimating the underlying signal f based on compressive-sensing measurements g. The proposed framework has the following properties: (i) in addition to estimating the underlying signal f, “error bars ” are also estimated, these giving a measure of confidence in the inverted signal; (ii) using knowledge of the error bars, a principled means is provided for determining when a sufficient

Compressed sensing is an emerging field based on the revelation that a small collection of linear projections of a sparse signal contains enough information for reconstruction. In this paper we introduce a new theory for distributed compressed sensing (DCS) that enables new distributed coding algorithms for multi-signal ensembles that exploit both intra- and inter-signal correlation structures. The DCS theory rests on a new concept that we term the joint sparsity of a signal ensemble. We study in detail three simple models for jointly sparse signals, propose algorithms for joint recovery of multiple signals from incoherent projections, and characterize theoretically and empirically the number of measurements per sensor required for accurate reconstruction. We establish a parallel with the Slepian-Wolf theorem from information theory and establish upper and lower bounds on the measurement rates required for encoding jointly sparse signals. In two of our three models, the results are asymptotically best-possible, meaning that both the upper and lower bounds match the performance of our practical algorithms. Moreover, simulations indicate that the asymptotics take effect with just a moderate number of signals. In some sense DCS is a framework for distributed compression of sources with memory, which has remained a challenging problem for some time. DCS is immediately applicable to a range of problems in sensor networks and arrays.

Traditional sampling theories consider the problem of reconstructing an unknown signal x from a series of samples. A prevalent assumption which often guarantees recovery from the given measurements is that x lies in a known subspace. Recently, there has been growing interest in nonlinear but structured signal models, in which x lies in a union of subspaces. In this paper we develop a general framework for robust and efficient recovery of such signals from a given set of samples. More specifically, we treat the case in which x lies in a sum of k subspaces, chosen from a larger set of m possibilities. The samples are modelled as inner products with an arbitrary set of sampling functions. To derive an efficient and robust recovery algorithm, we show that our problem can be formulated as that of recovering a block-sparse vector whose non-zero elements appear in fixed blocks. We then propose a mixed ℓ2/ℓ1 program for block sparse recovery. Our main result is an equivalence condition under which the proposed convex algorithm is guaranteed to recover the original signal. This result relies on the notion of block restricted isometry property (RIP), which is a generalization of the standard RIP used extensively in the context of compressed sensing. Based on RIP we also prove stability of our approach in the presence of noise and modeling errors. A special case of our framework is that of recovering multiple measurement vectors (MMV) that share a joint sparsity pattern. Adapting our results to this context leads to new MMV recovery methods as well as equivalence conditions under which the entire set can be determined efficiently.

Sparse coding—that is, modelling data vectors as sparse linear combinations of basis elements—is widely used in machine learning, neuroscience, signal processing, and statistics. This paper focuses on the large-scale matrix factorization problem that consists of learning the basis set, adapting it to specific data. Variations of this problem include dictionary learning in signal processing, non-negative matrix factorization and sparse principal component analysis. In this paper, we propose to address these tasks with a new online optimization algorithm, based on stochastic approximations, which scales up gracefully to large datasets with millions of training samples, and extends naturally to various matrix factorization formulations, making it suitable for a wide range of learning problems. A proof of convergence is presented, along with experiments with natural images and genomic data demonstrating that it leads to state-of-the-art performance in terms of speed and optimization for both small and large datasets.

Traditional sampling theories consider the problem of reconstructing an unknown signal x from a series of samples. A prevalent assumption which often guarantees a unique signal consistent with the given measurements is that x lies in a known subspace. Recently, there has been growing interest in nonlinear but structured signal models, in which x is assumed to lie in a union of subspaces. An example is the case in which x is a finite length vector that is sparse in a given basis. In this paper we develop a general framework for robust and efficient recovery of such signals from a given set of samples. More specifically, we treat the case in which x lies in a finite union of finite dimensional spaces and the samples are modelled as inner products with an arbitrary set of sampling functions. We first develop conditions under which unique and stable recovery of x is possible, albeit with algorithms that have combinatorial complexity. To derive an efficient and robust recovery algorithm, we then show that our problem can be formulated as that of recovering a block sparse vector, namely a vector whose non-zero elements appear in fixed blocks. To solve this problem, we suggest minimizing a mixed ℓ2/ℓ1 norm subject to the measurement equations. We then develop equivalence conditions under which the proposed convex algorithm is guaranteed to recover the original signal. These results rely on the notion of block restricted isometry property (RIP), which is a generalization of the standard RIP used extensively in the context of compressed sensing. A special case of the proposed framework is that of recovering multiple measurement vectors (MMV) that share a joint sparsity pattern. Specializing our results to this context leads to new MMV recovery methods as well as equivalence conditions under which the entire set can be determined efficiently. I.

Abstract—Conventional sub-Nyquist sampling methods for analog signals exploit prior information about the spectral support. In this paper, we consider the challenging problem of blind sub-Nyquist sampling of multiband signals, whose unknown frequency support occupies only a small portion of a wide spectrum. Our primary design goals are efficient hardware implementation and low computational load on the supporting digital processing. We propose a system, named the modulated wideband converter, which first multiplies the analog signal by a bank of periodic waveforms. The product is then low-pass filtered and sampled uniformly at a low rate, which is orders of magnitude smaller than Nyquist. Perfect recovery from the proposed samples is achieved under certain necessary and sufficient conditions. We also develop a digital architecture, which allows either reconstruction of the analog input, or processing of any band of interest at a low rate, that is, without interpolating to the high Nyquist rate. Numerical simulations demonstrate many engineering aspects: robustness to noise and mismodeling, potential hardware simplifications, real-time performance for signals with time-varying support and stability to quantization effects. We compare our system with two previous approaches: periodic nonuniform sampling, which is bandwidth limited by existing hardware devices, and the random demodulator, which is restricted to discrete multitone signals and has a high computational load. In the broader context of Nyquist sampling, our scheme has the potential to break through the bandwidth barrier of state-of-the-art analog conversion technologies such as interleaved converters. Index Terms—Analog-to-digital conversion (ADC), compressive sampling (CS), infinite measurement vectors (IMV), multiband

Abstract — Multiple measurement vector (MMV) is a relatively new problem in sparse representations. Efficient methods have been proposed. Considering many theoretical results that are available in a simple case – single measure vector (SMV) – the theoretical analysis regarding MMV is lacking. In this paper, some known results of SMV are generalized to MMV. Some of these new results take advantages of additional information in the formulation of MMV. We consider the uniqueness under both an ℓ0-norm like criterion and an ℓ1-norm like criterion. The consequent equivalence between the ℓ0-norm approach and the ℓ1-norm approach indicates a computationally efficient way of finding the sparsest representation in an over-complete dictionary. For greedy algorithms, it is proven that under certain conditions, orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) can find the sparsest representation of an MMV with computational efficiency, just like in SMV. Simulations show that the predictions made by the proved theorems tend to be very conservative; this is consistent with some recent theoretical advances in probability. The connections will be discussed.

Compressed sensing is an emerging signal acquisition technique that enables signals to be sampled well below the Nyquist rate, given that the signal has a sparse representation in an orthonormal basis. In fact, sparsity in an orthonormal basis is only one possible signal model that allows for sampling strategies below the Nyquist rate. In this paper we consider a more general signal model and assume signals that live on or close to the union of linear subspaces of low dimension. We present sampling theorems for this model that are in the same spirit as the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem in that they connect the number of required samples to certain model parameters. Contrary to the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, which gives a necessary and sufficient condition for the number of required samples as well as a simple linear algorithm for signal reconstruction, the model studied here is more complex. We therefore concentrate on two aspects of the signal model, the existence of one to one maps to lower dimensional observation spaces and the smoothness of the inverse map. We show that almost all linear maps are one to one when the observation space is at least of the same dimension as the largest dimension of the convex hull of the union of any two subspaces in the model. However, we also show that in order for the inverse map to have certain smoothness properties such as a given finite Lipschitz constant, the required observation dimension necessarily depends logarithmically