Structured Sparsity Models for Multiparty Speech Recovery from Reverberant Recordings

We tackle the multi-party speech recovery problem through modeling the acoustic of the reverberant chambers. Our approach exploits structured sparsity models to perform room modeling and speech recovery. We propose a scheme for characterizing the room acoustic from the unknown competing speech sources relying on localization of the early images of the speakers by sparse approximation of the spatial spectra of the virtual sources in a free-space model. The images are then clustered exploiting the low-rank structure of the spectro-temporal components belonging to each source. This enables us to identify the early support of the room impulse response function and its unique map to the room geometry. To further tackle the ambiguity of the reflection ratios, we propose a novel formulation of the reverberation model and estimate the absorption coefficients through a convex optimization exploiting joint sparsity model formulated upon spatio-spectral sparsity of concurrent speech representation. The acoustic parameters are then incorporated for separating individual speech signals through either structured sparse recovery or inverse filtering the acoustic channels. The experiments conducted on real data recordings demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for multi-party speech recovery and recognition.Comment: 31 page

Recovery of binary sparse signals from compressed linear measurements via polynomial optimization

The recovery of signals with finite-valued components from few linear measurements is a problem with widespread applications and interesting mathematical characteristics. In the compressed sensing framework, tailored methods have been recently proposed to deal with the case of finite-valued sparse signals. In this work, we focus on binary sparse signals and we propose a novel formulation, based on polynomial optimization. This approach is analyzed and compared to the state-of-the-art binary compressed sensing methods

Machine Learning in Wireless Sensor Networks: Algorithms, Strategies, and Applications

Wireless sensor networks monitor dynamic environments that change rapidly over time. This dynamic behavior is either caused by external factors or initiated by the system designers themselves. To adapt to such conditions, sensor networks often adopt machine learning techniques to eliminate the need for unnecessary redesign. Machine learning also inspires many practical solutions that maximize resource utilization and prolong the lifespan of the network. In this paper, we present an extensive literature review over the period 2002-2013 of machine learning methods that were used to address common issues in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The advantages and disadvantages of each proposed algorithm are evaluated against the corresponding problem. We also provide a comparative guide to aid WSN designers in developing suitable machine learning solutions for their specific application challenges.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Holographic particle localization under multiple scattering

We introduce a novel framework that incorporates multiple scattering for large-scale 3D particle-localization using single-shot in-line holography. Traditional holographic techniques rely on single-scattering models which become inaccurate under high particle-density. We demonstrate that by exploiting multiple-scattering, localization is significantly improved. Both forward and back-scattering are computed by our method under a tractable recursive framework, in which each recursion estimates the next higher-order field within the volume. The inverse scattering is presented as a nonlinear optimization that promotes sparsity, and can be implemented efficiently. We experimentally reconstruct 100 million object voxels from a single 1-megapixel hologram. Our work promises utilization of multiple scattering for versatile large-scale applications

Sparsity-Cognizant Total Least-Squares for Perturbed Compressive Sampling

Solving linear regression problems based on the total least-squares (TLS) criterion has well-documented merits in various applications, where perturbations appear both in the data vector as well as in the regression matrix. However, existing TLS approaches do not account for sparsity possibly present in the unknown vector of regression coefficients. On the other hand, sparsity is the key attribute exploited by modern compressive sampling and variable selection approaches to linear regression, which include noise in the data, but do not account for perturbations in the regression matrix. The present paper fills this gap by formulating and solving TLS optimization problems under sparsity constraints. Near-optimum and reduced-complexity suboptimum sparse (S-) TLS algorithms are developed to address the perturbed compressive sampling (and the related dictionary learning) challenge, when there is a mismatch between the true and adopted bases over which the unknown vector is sparse. The novel S-TLS schemes also allow for perturbations in the regression matrix of the least-absolute selection and shrinkage selection operator (Lasso), and endow TLS approaches with ability to cope with sparse, under-determined "errors-in-variables" models. Interesting generalizations can further exploit prior knowledge on the perturbations to obtain novel weighted and structured S-TLS solvers. Analysis and simulations demonstrate the practical impact of S-TLS in calibrating the mismatch effects of contemporary grid-based approaches to cognitive radio sensing, and robust direction-of-arrival estimation using antenna arrays.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin