arXiv subjects

Arash Amini

Publications and source records attributed to Arash Amini.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Optimal Weighted Low-rank Matrix Recovery with Subspace Prior Information

Matrix sensing is the problem of reconstructing a low-rank matrix from a few linear measurements. In many applications such as collaborative filtering, the famous Netflix prize problem, and seismic data interpolation, there exists some prior information about the column and row spaces of the ground-truth low-rank matrix. In this paper, we exploit this prior information by proposing a weighted optimization problem where its objective function promotes both rank and prior subspace information. Using the recent results in conic integral geometry, we obtain the unique optimal weights that minimize the required number of measurements. As simulation results confirm, the proposed convex program with optimal weights requires substantially fewer measurements than the regular nuclear norm minimization.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Distribution-aware Block-sparse Recovery via Convex Optimization

We study the problem of reconstructing a block-sparse signal from compressively sampled measurements. In certain applications, in addition to the inherent block-sparse structure of the signal, some prior information about the block support, i.e. blocks containing non-zero elements, might be available. Although many block-sparse recovery algorithms have been investigated in Bayesian framework, it is still unclear how to incorporate the information about the probability of occurrence into regularization-based block-sparse recovery in an optimal sense. In this work, we bridge between these fields by the aid of a new concept in conic integral geometry. Specifically, we solve a weighted optimization problem when the prior distribution about the block support is available. Moreover, we obtain the unique weights that minimize the expected required number of measurements. Our simulations on both synthetic and real data confirm that these weights considerably decrease the required sample complexity.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2018

Eigenvectors of Deformed Wigner Random Matrices

We investigate eigenvectors of rank-one deformations of random matrices $\boldsymbol B = \boldsymbol A + θ\boldsymbol {uu}^*$ in which $\boldsymbol A \in \mathbb R^{N \times N}$ is a Wigner real symmetric random matrix, $θ\in \mathbb R^+$, and $\boldsymbol u$ is uniformly distributed on the unit sphere. It is well known that for $θ> 1$ the eigenvector associated with the largest eigenvalue of $\boldsymbol B$ closely estimates $\boldsymbol u$ asymptotically, while for $θ< 1$ the eigenvectors of $\boldsymbol B$ are uninformative about $\boldsymbol u$. We examine $\mathcal O(\frac{1}{N})$ correlation of eigenvectors with $\boldsymbol u$ before phase transition and show that eigenvectors with larger eigenvalue exhibit stronger alignment with deforming vector through an explicit inverse law. This distribution function will be shown to be the ordinary generating function of Chebyshev polynomials of second kind. These polynomials form an orthogonal set with respect to the semicircle weighting function. This law is an increasing function in the support of semicircle law for eigenvalues $(-2\: ,+2)$. Therefore, most of energy of the unknown deforming vector is concentrated in a $cN$-dimensional ($c<1$) known subspace of $\boldsymbol B$. We use a combinatorial approach to prove the result.

math.ST↗

arXiv2018

Improved Recovery of Analysis Sparse Vectors in Presence of Prior Information

In this work, we consider the problem of recovering analysis-sparse signals from under-sampled measurements when some prior information about the support is available. We incorporate such information in the recovery stage by suitably tuning the weights in a weighted $\ell_1$ analysis optimization problem. Indeed, we try to set the weights such that the method succeeds with minimum number of measurements. For this purpose, we exploit the upper-bound on the statistical dimension of a certain cone to determine the weights. Our numerical simulations confirm that the introduced method with tuned weights outperforms the standard $\ell_1$ analysis technique.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2018

Robustness of Two-Dimensional Line Spectral Estimation Against Spiky Noise

The aim of two-dimensional line spectral estimation is to super-resolve the spectral point sources of the signal from time samples. In many associated applications such as radar and sonar, due to cut-off and saturation regions in electronic devices, some of the numbers of samples are corrupted by spiky noise. To overcome this problem, we present a new convex program to simultaneously estimate spectral point sources and spiky noise in two dimensions. To prove uniqueness of the solution, it is sufficient to show that a dual certificate exists. Construction of the dual certificate imposes a mild condition on the separation of the spectral point sources. Also, the number of spikes and detectable sparse sources are shown to be a logarithmic function of the number of time samples. Simulation results confirm the conclusions of our general theory.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2018

Sample Complexity of Total Variation Minimization

This work considers the use of Total variation (TV) minimization in the recovery of a given gradient sparse vector from Gaussian linear measurements. It has been shown in recent studies that there exist a sharp phase transition behavior in TV minimization in asymptotic regimes. The phase transition curve specifies the boundary of success and failure of TV minimization for large number of measurements. It is a challenging task to obtain a theoretical bound that reflects this curve. In this work, we present a novel upper-bound that suitably approximates this curve and is asymptotically sharp. Numerical results show that our bound is closer to the empirical TV phase transition curve than the previously known bound obtained by Kabanava.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2018

How Compressible are Innovation Processes?

The sparsity and compressibility of finite-dimensional signals are of great interest in fields such as compressed sensing. The notion of compressibility is also extended to infinite sequences of i.i.d. or ergodic random variables based on the observed error in their nonlinear k-term approximation. In this work, we use the entropy measure to study the compressibility of continuous-domain innovation processes (alternatively known as white noise). Specifically, we define such a measure as the entropy limit of the doubly quantized (time and amplitude) process. This provides a tool to compare the compressibility of various innovation processes. It also allows us to identify an analogue of the concept of "entropy dimension" which was originally defined by Rényi for random variables. Particular attention is given to stable and impulsive Poisson innovation processes. Here, our results recognize Poisson innovations as the more compressible ones with an entropy measure far below that of stable innovations. While this result departs from the previous knowledge regarding the compressibility of fat-tailed distributions, our entropy measure ranks stable innovations according to their tail decay.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2017

Angular Accuracy of Steerable Feature Detectors

The detection of landmarks or patterns is of interest for extracting features in biological images. Hence, algorithms for finding these keypoints have been extensively investigated in the literature, and their localization and detection properties are well known. In this paper, we study the complementary topic of local orientation estimation, which has not received similar attention. Simply stated, the problem that we address is the following: estimate the angle of rotation of a pattern with steerable filters centered at the same location, where the image is corrupted by colored isotropic Gaussian noise. For this problem, we use a statistical framework based on the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) that sets a fundamental limit on the accuracy of the corresponding class of estimators. We propose a scheme to measure the performance of estimators based on steerable filters (as a lower bound), while considering the connection to maximum likelihood estimation. Beyond the general results, we analyze the asymptotic behaviour of the lower bound in terms of the order of steerablility and propose an optimal subset of components that minimizes the bound. We define a mechanism for selecting optimal subspaces of the span of the detectors. These are characterized by the most relevant angular frequencies. Finally, we project our template to a basis of steerable functions and experimentally show that the prediction accuracy achieves the predicted CRLB. As an extension, we also consider steerable wavelet detectors.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2017

Existence and Continuity of Differential Entropy for a Class of Distributions

In this paper, we identify a class of absolutely continuous probability distributions, and show that the differential entropy is uniformly convergent over this space under the metric of total variation distance. One of the advantages of this class is that the requirements could be readily verified for a given distribution.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2016

Fast Methods for Recovering Sparse Parameters in Linear Low Rank Models

In this paper, we investigate the recovery of a sparse weight vector (parameters vector) from a set of noisy linear combinations. However, only partial information about the matrix representing the linear combinations is available. Assuming a low-rank structure for the matrix, one natural solution would be to first apply a matrix completion on the data, and then to solve the resulting compressed sensing problem. In big data applications such as massive MIMO and medical data, the matrix completion step imposes a huge computational burden. Here, we propose to reduce the computational cost of the completion task by ignoring the columns corresponding to zero elements in the sparse vector. To this end, we employ a technique to initially approximate the support of the sparse vector. We further propose to unify the partial matrix completion and sparse vector recovery into an augmented four-step problem. Simulation results reveal that the augmented approach achieves the best performance, while both proposed methods outperform the natural two-step technique with substantially less computational requirements.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2015

Sampling and Reconstruction of Shapes with Algebraic Boundaries

We present a sampling theory for a class of binary images with finite rate of innovation (FRI). Every image in our model is the restriction of $\mathds{1}_{\{p\leq0\}}$ to the image plane, where $\mathds{1}$ denotes the indicator function and $p$ is some real bivariate polynomial. This particularly means that the boundaries in the image form a subset of an algebraic curve with the implicit polynomial $p$. We show that the image parameters --i.e., the polynomial coefficients-- satisfy a set of linear annihilation equations with the coefficients being the image moments. The inherent sensitivity of the moments to noise makes the reconstruction process numerically unstable and narrows the choice of the sampling kernels to polynomial reproducing kernels. As a remedy to these problems, we replace conventional moments with more stable \emph{generalized moments} that are adjusted to the given sampling kernel. The benefits are threefold: (1) it relaxes the requirements on the sampling kernels, (2) produces annihilation equations that are robust at numerical precision, and (3) extends the results to images with unbounded boundaries. We further reduce the sensitivity of the reconstruction process to noise by taking into account the sign of the polynomial at certain points, and sequentially enforcing measurement consistency. We consider various numerical experiments to demonstrate the performance of our algorithm in reconstructing binary images, including low to moderate noise levels and a range of realistic sampling kernels.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2015

Shapes From Pixels

Continuous-domain visual signals are usually captured as discrete (digital) images. This operation is not invertible in general, in the sense that the continuous-domain signal cannot be exactly reconstructed based on the discrete image, unless it satisfies certain constraints (\emph{e.g.}, bandlimitedness). In this paper, we study the problem of recovering shape images with smooth boundaries from a set of samples. Thus, the reconstructed image is constrained to regenerate the same samples (consistency), as well as forming a shape (bilevel) image. We initially formulate the reconstruction technique by minimizing the shape perimeter over the set of consistent binary shapes. Next, we relax the non-convex shape constraint to transform the problem into minimizing the total variation over consistent non-negative-valued images. We also introduce a requirement (called reducibility) that guarantees equivalence between the two problems. We illustrate that the reducibility property effectively sets a requirement on the minimum sampling density. One can draw analogy between the reducibility property and the so-called restricted isometry property (RIP) in compressed sensing which establishes the equivalence of the $\ell_0$ minimization with the relaxed $\ell_1$ minimization. We also evaluate the performance of the relaxed alternative in various numerical experiments.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2014

On the Continuity of Characteristic Functionals and Sparse Stochastic Modeling

The characteristic functional is the infinite-dimensional generalization of the Fourier transform for measures on function spaces. It characterizes the statistical law of the associated stochastic process in the same way as a characteristic function specifies the probability distribution of its corresponding random variable. Our goal in this work is to lay the foundations of the innovation model, a (possibly) non-Gaussian probabilistic model for sparse signals. This is achieved by using the characteristic functional to specify sparse stochastic processes that are defined as linear transformations of general continuous-domain white noises (also called innovation processes). We prove the existence of a broad class of sparse processes by using the Minlos-Bochner theorem. This requires a careful study of the regularity properties, especially the boundedness in Lp-spaces, of the characteristic functional of the innovations. We are especially interested in the functionals that are only defined for p<1 since they appear to be associated with the sparser kind of processes. Finally, we apply our main theorem of existence to two specific subclasses of processes with specific invariance properties.

math.PR↗

arXiv2013

Recovery of Low-Rank Matrices under Affine Constraints via a Smoothed Rank Function

In this paper, the problem of matrix rank minimization under affine constraints is addressed. The state-of-the-art algorithms can recover matrices with a rank much less than what is sufficient for the uniqueness of the solution of this optimization problem. We propose an algorithm based on a smooth approximation of the rank function, which practically improves recovery limits on the rank of the solution. This approximation leads to a non-convex program; thus, to avoid getting trapped in local solutions, we use the following scheme. Initially, a rough approximation of the rank function subject to the affine constraints is optimized. As the algorithm proceeds, finer approximations of the rank are optimized and the solver is initialized with the solution of the previous approximation until reaching the desired accuracy. On the theoretical side, benefiting from the spherical section property, we will show that the sequence of the solutions of the approximating function converges to the minimum rank solution. On the experimental side, it will be shown that the proposed algorithm, termed SRF standing for Smoothed Rank Function, can recover matrices which are unique solutions of the rank minimization problem and yet not recoverable by nuclear norm minimization. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that, in completing partially observed matrices, the accuracy of SRF is considerably and consistently better than some famous algorithms when the number of revealed entries is close to the minimum number of parameters that uniquely represent a low-rank matrix.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2012

Bayesian Estimation for Continuous-Time Sparse Stochastic Processes

We consider continuous-time sparse stochastic processes from which we have only a finite number of noisy/noiseless samples. Our goal is to estimate the noiseless samples (denoising) and the signal in-between (interpolation problem). By relying on tools from the theory of splines, we derive the joint a priori distribution of the samples and show how this probability density function can be factorized. The factorization enables us to tractably implement the maximum a posteriori and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) criteria as two statistical approaches for estimating the unknowns. We compare the derived statistical methods with well-known techniques for the recovery of sparse signals, such as the $\ell_1$ norm and Log ($\ell_1$-$\ell_0$ relaxation) regularization methods. The simulation results show that, under certain conditions, the performance of the regularization techniques can be very close to that of the MMSE estimator.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2012

A unified formulation of Gaussian vs. sparse stochastic processes - Part II: Discrete-domain theory

This paper is devoted to the characterization of an extended family of CARMA (continuous-time autoregressive moving average) processes that are solutions of stochastic differential equations driven by white Levy innovations. These are completely specified by: (1) a set of poles and zeros that fixes their correlation structure, and (2) a canonical infinitely-divisible probability distribution that controls their degree of sparsity (with the Gaussian model corresponding to the least sparse scenario). The generalized CARMA processes are either stationary or non-stationary, depending on the location of the poles in the complex plane. The most basic non-stationary representatives (with a single pole at the origin) are the Levy processes, which are the non-Gaussian counterparts of Brownian motion. We focus on the general analog-to-discrete conversion problem and introduce a novel spline-based formalism that greatly simplifies the derivation of the correlation properties and joint probability distributions of the discrete versions of these processes. We also rely on the concept of generalized increment process, which suppresses all long range dependencies, to specify an equivalent discrete-domain innovation model. A crucial ingredient is the existence of a minimally-supported function associated with the whitening operator L; this B-spline, which is fundamental to our formulation, appears in most of our formulas, both at the level of the correlation and the characteristic function. We make use of these discrete-domain results to numerically generate illustrative examples of sparse signals that are consistent with the continuous-domain model.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2011

OFDM pilot allocation for sparse channel estimation

In communication systems, efficient use of the spectrum is an indispensable concern. Recently the use of compressed sensing for the purpose of estimating Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) sparse multipath channels has been proposed to decrease the transmitted overhead in form of the pilot subcarriers which are essential for channel estimation. In this paper, we investigate the problem of deterministic pilot allocation in OFDM systems. The method is based on minimizing the coherence of the submatrix of the unitary Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) matrix associated with the pilot subcarriers. Unlike the usual case of equidistant pilot subcarriers, we show that non-uniform patterns based on cyclic difference sets are optimal. In cases where there are no difference sets, we perform a greedy search method for finding a suboptimal solution. We also investigate the performance of the recovery methods such as Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) and Iterative Method with Adaptive Thresholding (IMAT) for estimation of the channel taps.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2011

A proposed Optimized Spline Interpolation

The goal of this paper is to design compact support basis spline functions that best approximate a given filter (e.g., an ideal Lowpass filter). The optimum function is found by minimizing the least square problem ($\ell$2 norm of the difference between the desired and the approximated filters) by means of the calculus of variation; more precisely, the introduced splines give optimal filtering properties with respect to their time support interval. Both mathematical analysis and simulation results confirm the superiority of these splines.

cs.MM↗