Differential fast fixed-point algorithms for underdetermined instantaneous and convolutive partial blind source separation

This paper concerns underdetermined linear instantaneous and convolutive blind source separation (BSS), i.e., the case when the number of observed mixed signals is lower than the number of sources.We propose partial BSS methods, which separate supposedly nonstationary sources of interest (while keeping residual components for the other, supposedly stationary, "noise" sources). These methods are based on the general differential BSS concept that we introduced before. In the instantaneous case, the approach proposed in this paper consists of a differential extension of the FastICA method (which does not apply to underdetermined mixtures). In the convolutive case, we extend our recent time-domain fast fixed-point C-FICA algorithm to underdetermined mixtures. Both proposed approaches thus keep the attractive features of the FastICA and C-FICA methods. Our approaches are based on differential sphering processes, followed by the optimization of the differential nonnormalized kurtosis that we introduce in this paper. Experimental tests show that these differential algorithms are much more robust to noise sources than the standard FastICA and C-FICA algorithms.Comment: this paper describes our differential FastICA-like algorithms for linear instantaneous and convolutive underdetermined mixture

Least Dependent Component Analysis Based on Mutual Information

We propose to use precise estimators of mutual information (MI) to find least dependent components in a linearly mixed signal. On the one hand this seems to lead to better blind source separation than with any other presently available algorithm. On the other hand it has the advantage, compared to other implementations of `independent' component analysis (ICA) some of which are based on crude approximations for MI, that the numerical values of the MI can be used for: (i) estimating residual dependencies between the output components; (ii) estimating the reliability of the output, by comparing the pairwise MIs with those of re-mixed components; (iii) clustering the output according to the residual interdependencies. For the MI estimator we use a recently proposed k-nearest neighbor based algorithm. For time sequences we combine this with delay embedding, in order to take into account non-trivial time correlations. After several tests with artificial data, we apply the resulting MILCA (Mutual Information based Least dependent Component Analysis) algorithm to a real-world dataset, the ECG of a pregnant woman. The software implementation of the MILCA algorithm is freely available at http://www.fz-juelich.de/nic/cs/softwareComment: 18 pages, 20 figures, Phys. Rev. E (in press

Post-nonlinear speech mixture identification using single-source temporal zones & curve clustering

International audienceIn this paper, we propose a method for estimating the nonlinearities which hold in post-nonlinear source separation. In particular and contrary to the state-of-art methods, our proposed approach uses a weak joint-sparsity sources assumption: we look for tiny temporal zones where only one source is active. This method is well suited to non-stationary signals such as speech. The main novelty of our work consists of using nonlinear single-source confidence measures and curve clustering. Such an approach may be seen as an extension of linear instantaneous sparse component analysis to post-nonlinear mixtures. The performance of the approach is illustrated with some tests showing that the nonlinear functions are estimated accurately, with mean square errors around 4e-5 when the sources are " strongly" mixed