Uniqueness of Nonnegative Tensor Approximations

We show that for a nonnegative tensor, a best nonnegative rank-r approximation is almost always unique, its best rank-one approximation may always be chosen to be a best nonnegative rank-one approximation, and that the set of nonnegative tensors with non-unique best rank-one approximations form an algebraic hypersurface. We show that the last part holds true more generally for real tensors and thereby determine a polynomial equation so that a real or nonnegative tensor which does not satisfy this equation is guaranteed to have a unique best rank-one approximation. We also establish an analogue for real or nonnegative symmetric tensors. In addition, we prove a singular vector variant of the Perron--Frobenius Theorem for positive tensors and apply it to show that a best nonnegative rank-r approximation of a positive tensor can never be obtained by deflation. As an aside, we verify that the Euclidean distance (ED) discriminants of the Segre variety and the Veronese variety are hypersurfaces and give defining equations of these ED discriminants

Blind Multilinear Identification

We discuss a technique that allows blind recovery of signals or blind identification of mixtures in instances where such recovery or identification were previously thought to be impossible: (i) closely located or highly correlated sources in antenna array processing, (ii) highly correlated spreading codes in CDMA radio communication, (iii) nearly dependent spectra in fluorescent spectroscopy. This has important implications --- in the case of antenna array processing, it allows for joint localization and extraction of multiple sources from the measurement of a noisy mixture recorded on multiple sensors in an entirely deterministic manner. In the case of CDMA, it allows the possibility of having a number of users larger than the spreading gain. In the case of fluorescent spectroscopy, it allows for detection of nearly identical chemical constituents. The proposed technique involves the solution of a bounded coherence low-rank multilinear approximation problem. We show that bounded coherence allows us to establish existence and uniqueness of the recovered solution. We will provide some statistical motivation for the approximation problem and discuss greedy approximation bounds. To provide the theoretical underpinnings for this technique, we develop a corresponding theory of sparse separable decompositions of functions, including notions of rank and nuclear norm that specialize to the usual ones for matrices and operators but apply to also hypermatrices and tensors.Comment: 20 pages, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Multiarray Signal Processing: Tensor decomposition meets compressed sensing

We discuss how recently discovered techniques and tools from compressed sensing can be used in tensor decompositions, with a view towards modeling signals from multiple arrays of multiple sensors. We show that with appropriate bounds on a measure of separation between radiating sources called coherence, one could always guarantee the existence and uniqueness of a best rank-r approximation of the tensor representing the signal. We also deduce a computationally feasible variant of Kruskal's uniqueness condition, where the coherence appears as a proxy for k-rank. Problems of sparsest recovery with an infinite continuous dictionary, lowest-rank tensor representation, and blind source separation are treated in a uniform fashion. The decomposition of the measurement tensor leads to simultaneous localization and extraction of radiating sources, in an entirely deterministic manner.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur