Signal processing with Fourier analysis, novel algorithms and applications

Fourier analysis is the study of the way general functions may be represented or approximated by sums of simpler trigonometric functions, also analogously known as sinusoidal modeling. The original idea of Fourier had a profound impact on mathematical analysis, physics and engineering because it diagonalizes time-invariant convolution operators. In the past signal processing was a topic that stayed almost exclusively in electrical engineering, where only the experts could cancel noise, compress and reconstruct signals. Nowadays it is almost ubiquitous, as everyone now deals with modern digital signals. Medical imaging, wireless communications and power systems of the future will experience more data processing conditions and wider range of applications requirements than the systems of today. Such systems will require more powerful, efficient and flexible signal processing algorithms that are well designed to handle such needs. No matter how advanced our hardware technology becomes we will still need intelligent and efficient algorithms to address the growing demands in signal processing. In this thesis, we investigate novel techniques to solve a suite of four fundamental problems in signal processing that have a wide range of applications. The relevant equations, literature of signal processing applications, analysis and final numerical algorithms/methods to solve them using Fourier analysis are discussed for different applications in the electrical engineering/computer science. The first four chapters cover the following topics of central importance in the field of signal processing: • Fast Phasor Estimation using Adaptive Signal Processing (Chapter 2) • Frequency Estimation from Nonuniform Samples (Chapter 3) • 2D Polar and 3D Spherical Polar Nonuniform Discrete Fourier Transform (Chapter 4) • Robust 3D registration using Spherical Polar Discrete Fourier Transform and Spherical Harmonics (Chapter 5) Even though each of these four methods discussed may seem completely disparate, the underlying motivation for more efficient processing by exploiting the Fourier domain signal structure remains the same. The main contribution of this thesis is the innovation in the analysis, synthesis, discretization of certain well known problems like phasor estimation, frequency estimation, computations of a particular non-uniform Fourier transform and signal registration on the transformed domain. We conduct propositions and evaluations of certain applications relevant algorithms such as, frequency estimation algorithm using non-uniform sampling, polar and spherical polar Fourier transform. The techniques proposed are also useful in the field of computer vision and medical imaging. From a practical perspective, the proposed algorithms are shown to improve the existing solutions in the respective fields where they are applied/evaluated. The formulation and final proposition is shown to have a variety of benefits. Future work with potentials in medical imaging, directional wavelets, volume rendering, video/3D object classifications, high dimensional registration are also discussed in the final chapter. Finally, in the spirit of reproducible research we release the implementation of these algorithms to the public using Github

FPGA-based Serial Port-controlled Frequency Adjustable Waveform Generator

This article explores the design, optimization, and applications of FPGA-based Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) waveform generators. The DDS technology is widely used in signal generation and processing and is favored for its flexibility and precision. The paper discusses performance optimization strategies, focusing on enhancing frequency resolution, waveform quality, and phase accumulation speed. Suggestions include increasing phase accumulator’s bit width, optimizing the size of the phase lookup table, introducing frequency interpolation, and employing fast accumulation algorithms. Additionally, it delves into more applications such as high-precision testing, high-speed communication systems, multi-channel data synchronization, and multi-waveform outputs. The conclusion emphasizes the ongoing need for performance improvements and application advancements. Future directions include exploring higher-precision phase lookup table designs, sophisticated filtering, efficient accumulation algorithms, and leveraging advanced FPGA chips for broader application scope. Overall, FPGA-based DDS waveform generators exhibit significant potential across various domains, promising enhanced signal accuracy and adaptability

Evaluation of Design Tools for Rapid Prototyping of Parallel Signal Processing Algorithms

Digital signal processing (DSP) has become a popular method for handling not only signal processing, but communications, and control system applications. A DSP application of interest to the Air Force is high speed avionics processing. The real time computing requirements of avionics processing exceed the capabilities of current single chip DSP processors, and parallelization of multiple DSP processors is a solution to handle such requirements. Designing and implementing a parallel DSP algorithm has been a lengthy process often requiring different design tools and extensive programming experience. Through the use of integrated software development tools, rapid prototyping becomes possible by simulating algorithms, generating code for workstations or DSP microprocessors, and generating hardware description language code for hardware synthesis. This research examines the use of one such tool, the Signal Processing WorkSystem (SPW) by the Alta Group of Cadence Design Systems, Inc., and how SPW supports the rapid prototyping process from an avionics algorithm design through simulation and hardware implementation. Throughout this process, SPW is evaluated as an aid to the avionics designer to meet design objectives and evaluate tradeoffs to find the best blend of efficiency and effectiveness. By designing a two dimensional fast Fourier transform algorithm as a specific avionics algorithm and exploring implementation options, SPW is shown to be a viable rapid prototyping solution allowing an avionics designer to focus on design trade-offs instead of implementation details while using parallelization to meet real-time application requirements

An overview of the holographic display related tasks within the European 3DTV project

A European consortium has been working since September 2004 on all video-based technical aspects of three-dimensional television. The group has structured its technical activities under five technical committees focusing on capturing 3D live scenes, converting the captured scenes to an abstract 3D representations, transmitting the 3D visual information, displaying the 3D video, and processing of signals for the conversion of the abstract 3D video to signals needed to drive the display. The display of 3D video signals by holographic means is highly desirable. Synthesis of high-resolution computer generated holograms with high spatial frequency content, using fast algorithms, is crucial. Fresnel approximation with its fast implementations, fast superposition of zonelens terms, look-up tables using pre-computed holoprimitives are reported in the literature. Phase-retrieval methods are also under investigation. Successful solutions to this problem will benefit from proper utilization and adaptation of signal processing tools like waveletes, fresnelets, chirplets. and atomic decompositions and various optimization algorithms like matching pursuit or simulated annealing

Discrete and Continuous Sparse Recovery Methods and Their Applications

Low dimensional signal processing has drawn an increasingly broad amount of attention in the past decade, because prior information about a low-dimensional space can be exploited to aid in the recovery of the signal of interest. Among all the different forms of low di- mensionality, in this dissertation we focus on the synthesis and analysis models of sparse recovery. This dissertation comprises two major topics. For the first topic, we discuss the synthesis model of sparse recovery and consider the dictionary mismatches in the model. We further introduce a continuous sparse recovery to eliminate the existing off-grid mismatches for DOA estimation. In the second topic, we focus on the analysis model, with an emphasis on efficient algorithms and performance analysis. In considering the sparse recovery method with structured dictionary mismatches for the synthesis model, we exploit the joint sparsity between the mismatch parameters and original sparse signal. We demonstrate that by exploiting this information, we can obtain a robust reconstruction under mild conditions on the sensing matrix. This model is very useful for radar and passive array applications. We propose several efficient algorithms to solve the joint sparse recovery problem. Using numerical examples, we demonstrate that our proposed algorithms outperform several methods in the literature. We further extend the mismatch model to a continuous sparse model, using the mathematical theory of super resolution. Statistical analysis shows the robustness of the proposed algorithm. A number-detection algorithm is also proposed for the co-prime arrays. By using numerical examples, we show that continuous sparse recovery further improves the DOA estimation accuracy, over both the joint sparse method and also MUSIC with spatial smoothing. In the second topic, we visit the corresponding analysis model of sparse recovery. Instead of assuming a sparse decomposition of the original signal, the analysis model focuses on the existence of a linear transformation which can make the original signal sparse. In this work we use a monotone version of the fast iterative shrinkage- thresholding algorithm (MFISTA) to yield efficient algorithms to solve the sparse recovery. We examine two widely used relaxation techniques, namely smoothing and decomposition, to relax the optimization. We show that although these two techniques are equivalent in their objective functions, the smoothing technique converges faster than the decomposition technique. We also compute the performance guarantee for the analysis model when a LASSO type of reconstruction is performed. By using numerical examples, we are able to show that the proposed algorithm is more efficient than other state of the art algorithms

Iterative greedy algorithm for solving the FIR paraunitary approximation problem

In this paper, a method for approximating a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) transfer function by a causal finite-impulse response (FIR) paraunitary (PU) system in a weighted least-squares sense is presented. Using a complete parameterization of FIR PU systems in terms of Householder-like building blocks, an iterative algorithm is proposed that is greedy in the sense that the observed mean-squared error at each iteration is guaranteed to not increase. For certain design problems in which there is a phase-type ambiguity in the desired response, which is formally defined in the paper, a phase feedback modification is proposed in which the phase of the FIR approximant is fed back to the desired response. With this modification in effect, it is shown that the resulting iterative algorithm not only still remains greedy, but also offers a better magnitude-type fit to the desired response. Simulation results show the usefulness and versatility of the proposed algorithm with respect to the design of principal component filter bank (PCFB)-like filter banks and the FIR PU interpolation problem. Concerning the PCFB design problem, it is shown that as the McMillan degree of the FIR PU approximant increases, the resulting filter bank behaves more and more like the infinite-order PCFB, consistent with intuition. In particular, this PCFB-like behavior is shown in terms of filter response shape, multiresolution, coding gain, noise reduction with zeroth-order Wiener filtering in the subbands, and power minimization for discrete multitone (DMT)-type transmultiplexers

Sparse image reconstruction on the sphere: analysis and synthesis

We develop techniques to solve ill-posed inverse problems on the sphere by sparse regularisation, exploiting sparsity in both axisymmetric and directional scale-discretised wavelet space. Denoising, inpainting, and deconvolution problems, and combinations thereof, are considered as examples. Inverse problems are solved in both the analysis and synthesis settings, with a number of different sampling schemes. The most effective approach is that with the most restricted solution-space, which depends on the interplay between the adopted sampling scheme, the selection of the analysis/synthesis problem, and any weighting of the l1 norm appearing in the regularisation problem. More efficient sampling schemes on the sphere improve reconstruction fidelity by restricting the solution-space and also by improving sparsity in wavelet space. We apply the technique to denoise Planck 353 GHz observations, improving the ability to extract the structure of Galactic dust emission, which is important for studying Galactic magnetism.Comment: 11 pages, 6 Figure

An Augmented Lagrangian Approach to the Constrained Optimization Formulation of Imaging Inverse Problems

We propose a new fast algorithm for solving one of the standard approaches to ill-posed linear inverse problems (IPLIP), where a (possibly non-smooth) regularizer is minimized under the constraint that the solution explains the observations sufficiently well. Although the regularizer and constraint are usually convex, several particular features of these problems (huge dimensionality, non-smoothness) preclude the use of off-the-shelf optimization tools and have stimulated a considerable amount of research. In this paper, we propose a new efficient algorithm to handle one class of constrained problems (often known as basis pursuit denoising) tailored to image recovery applications. The proposed algorithm, which belongs to the family of augmented Lagrangian methods, can be used to deal with a variety of imaging IPLIP, including deconvolution and reconstruction from compressive observations (such as MRI), using either total-variation or wavelet-based (or, more generally, frame-based) regularization. The proposed algorithm is an instance of the so-called "alternating direction method of multipliers", for which convergence sufficient conditions are known; we show that these conditions are satisfied by the proposed algorithm. Experiments on a set of image restoration and reconstruction benchmark problems show that the proposed algorithm is a strong contender for the state-of-the-art.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure, 8 tables. Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Image Processin