Noncoherent Short-Packet Communication via Modulation on Conjugated Zeros

We introduce a novel blind (noncoherent) communication scheme, called modulation on conjugate-reciprocal zeros (MOCZ), to reliably transmit short binary packets over unknown finite impulse response systems as used, for example, to model underspread wireless multipath channels. In MOCZ, the information is modulated onto the zeros of the transmitted signals z−transform. In the absence of additive noise, the zero structure of the signal is perfectly preserved at the receiver, no matter what the channel impulse response (CIR) is. Furthermore, by a proper selection of the zeros, we show that MOCZ is not only invariant to the CIR, but also robust against additive noise. Starting with the maximum-likelihood estimator, we define a low complexity and reliable decoder and compare it to various state-of-the art noncoherent schemes

Low-Complexity Modeling for Visual Data: Representations and Algorithms

With increasing availability and diversity of visual data generated in research labs and everyday life, it is becoming critical to develop disciplined and practical computation tools for such data. This thesis focuses on the low complexity representations and algorithms for visual data, in light of recent theoretical and algorithmic developments in high-dimensional data analysis. We first consider the problem of modeling a given dataset as superpositions of basic motifs. This model arises from several important applications, including microscopy image analysis, neural spike sorting and image deblurring. This motif-finding problem can be phrased as "short-and-sparse" blind deconvolution, in which the goal is to recover a short convolution kernel from its convolution with a sparse and random spike train. We normalize the convolution kernel to have unit Frobenius norm and then cast the blind deconvolution problem as a nonconvex optimization problem over the kernel sphere. We demonstrate that (i) in a certain region of the sphere, every local optimum is close to some shift truncation of the ground truth, when the activation spike is sufficiently sparse and long, and (ii) there exist efficient algorithms that recover some shift truncation of the ground truth under the same conditions. In addition, the geometric characterization of the local solution as well as the proposed algorithm naturally extend to more complicated sparse blind deconvolution problems, including image deblurring, convolutional dictionary learning. We next consider the problem of modeling physical nuisances across a collection of images, in the context of illumination-invariant object detection and recognition. Illumination variation remains a central challenge in object detection and recognition. Existing analyses of illumination variation typically pertain to convex, Lambertian objects, and guarantee quality of approximation in an average case sense. We show that it is possible to build vertex-description convex cone models with worst-case performance guarantees, for nonconvex Lambertian objects. Namely, a natural detection test based on the angle to the constructed cone guarantees to accept any image which is sufficiently well approximated with an image of the object under some admissible lighting condition, and guarantees to reject any image that does not have a sufficiently approximation. The cone models are generated by sampling point illuminations with sufficient density, which follows from a new perturbation bound for point images in the Lambertian model. As the number of point images required for guaranteed detection may be large, we introduce a new formulation for cone preserving dimensionality reduction, which leverages tools from sparse and low-rank decomposition to reduce the complexity, while controlling the approximation error with respect to the original cone. Preliminary numerical experiments suggest that this approach can significantly reduce the complexity of the resulting model

A Reversible Jump MCMC in Bayesian Blind Deconvolution with a Spherical Prior

Blind deconvolution (BD) is the recovery of a scene of interest convolved with an unknown impulse response function. Within a Bayesian context, prior distributions are assigned to both unknowns to regularize the BD problem. A common approach is to use Gaussian priors. Nonetheless, the latter do not alleviate the so-called scale ambiguity that prevents from efficiently sampling the joint posterior distribution and building appropriate estimators. In this paper, we instead use a Von-Mises prior that removes scale ambiguity and we focus on the design of a sampling scheme of the joint posterior. The latter may exhibit multiple modes. We propose accordingly a reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo method that prevents samples from lingering in local modes. Compared to state-of-the-art techniques, the algorithm shows an improved within- and between-mode mixing property with synthetic data. This paves the way for the design of Bayesian estimators naturally deprived of scale ambiguity

A Precise Analysis of PhaseMax in Phase Retrieval

Recovering an unknown complex signal from the magnitude of linear combinations of the signal is referred to as phase retrieval. We present an exact performance analysis of a recently proposed convex-optimization-formulation for this problem, known as PhaseMax. Standard convex-relaxation-based methods in phase retrieval resort to the idea of “lifting” which makes them computationally inefficient, since the number of unknowns is effectively squared. In contrast, PhaseMax is a novel convex relaxation that does not increase the number of unknowns. Instead it relies on an initial estimate of the true signal which must be externally provided. In this paper, we investigate the required number of measurements for exact recovery of the signal in the large system limit and when the linear measurement matrix is random with iid standard normal entries. If n denotes the dimension of the unknown complex signal and m the number of phaseless measurements, then in the large system limit, m/n > 4/cos^2(θ) measurements is necessary and sufficient to recover the signal with high probability, where θ is the angle between the initial estimate and the true signal. Our result indicates a sharp phase transition in the asymptotic regime which matches the empirical result in numerical simulations

Sparse Phase Retrieval: Uniqueness Guarantees and Recovery Algorithms

The problem of signal recovery from its Fourier transform magnitude is of paramount importance in various fields of engineering and has been around for over 100 years. Due to the absence of phase information, some form of additional information is required in order to be able to uniquely identify the signal of interest. In this work, we focus our attention on discrete-time sparse signals (of length n). We first show that, if the DFT dimension is greater than or equal to 2n, then almost all signals with aperiodic support can be uniquely identified by their Fourier transform magnitude (up to time-shift, conjugate-flip and global phase). Then, we develop an efficient Two-stage Sparse Phase Retrieval algorithm (TSPR), which involves: (i) identifying the support, i.e., the locations of the non-zero components, of the signal using a combinatorial algorithm (ii) identifying the signal values in the support using a convex algorithm. We show that TSPR can provably recover most O(n^(1/2-ϵ)-sparse signals (up to a timeshift, conjugate-flip and global phase). We also show that, for most O(n^(1/4-ϵ)-sparse signals, the recovery is robust in the presence of measurement noise. These recovery guarantees are asymptotic in nature. Numerical experiments complement our theoretical analysis and verify the effectiveness of TSPR

Deconvolution Problems for Structured Sparse Signal

This dissertation studies deconvolution problems of how structured sparse signals appear in nature, science and engineering. We discuss about the intrinsic solution to the problem of short-and-sparse deconvolution, how these solutions structured the optimization problem, and how do we design an efficient and practical algorithm base on aforementioned analytical findings. To fully utilized the information of structured sparse signals efficiently, we also propose a sensing method while the sampling acquisition is expansive, and study its sample limit and algorithms for signal recovery with limited samples