arXiv subjects

Matthew Fickus

Publications and source records attributed to Matthew Fickus.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Hadamard Equiangular Tight Frames

An equiangular tight frame (ETF) is a type of optimal packing of lines in Euclidean space. They are often represented as the columns of a short, fat matrix. In certain applications we want this matrix to be flat, that is, have the property that all of its entries have modulus one. In particular, real flat ETFs are equivalent to self-complementary binary codes that achieve the Grey-Rankin bound. Some flat ETFs are (complex) Hadamard ETFs, meaning they arise by extracting rows from a (complex) Hadamard matrix. These include harmonic ETFs, which are obtained by extracting the rows of a character table that correspond to a difference set in the underlying finite abelian group. In this paper, we give some new results about flat ETFs. One of these results gives an explicit Naimark complement for all Steiner ETFs, which in turn implies that all Kirkman ETFs are possibly-complex Hadamard ETFs. This in particular produces a new infinite family of real flat ETFs. Another result establishes an equivalence between real flat ETFs and certain types of quasi-symmetric designs, resulting in a new infinite family of such designs.

math.FA↗

arXiv2016

Equiangular tight frames from hyperovals

An equiangular tight frame (ETF) is a set of equal norm vectors in a Euclidean space whose coherence is as small as possible, equaling the Welch bound. Also known as Welch-bound-equality sequences, such frames arise in various applications, such as waveform design, quantum information theory, compressed sensing and algebraic coding theory. ETFs seem to be rare, and only a few methods of constructing them are known. In this paper, we present a new infinite family of complex ETFs that arises from hyperovals in finite projective planes. In particular, we give the first ever construction of a complex ETF of 76 vectors in a space of dimension 19. Recently, a computer-assisted approach was used to show that real ETFs of this size do not exist, resolving a longstanding open problem in this field. Our construction is a modification of a previously known technique for constructing ETFs from balanced incomplete block designs.

math.FA↗

arXiv2016

Equiangular tight frames with centroidal symmetry

An equiangular tight frame (ETF) is a set of unit vectors whose coherence achieves the Welch bound, and so is as incoherent as possible. Though they arise in many applications, only a few methods for constructing them are known. Motivated by the connection between real ETFs and graph theory, we introduce the notion of ETFs that are symmetric about their centroid. We then discuss how well-known constructions, such as harmonic ETFs and Steiner ETFs, can have centroidal symmetry. Finally, we establish a new equivalence between centroid-symmetric real ETFs and certain types of strongly regular graphs (SRGs). Together, these results give the first proof of the existence of certain SRGs, as well as the disproofs of the existence of others.

math.FA↗

arXiv2016

Tables of the existence of equiangular tight frames

A Grassmannian frame is a collection of unit vectors which are optimally incoherent. To date, the vast majority of explicit Grassmannian frames are equiangular tight frames (ETFs). This paper surveys every known construction of ETFs and tabulates existence for sufficiently small dimensions.

math.FA↗

arXiv2016

Rotation Invariant Angular Descriptor Via A Bandlimited Gaussian-like Kernel

We present a new smooth, Gaussian-like kernel that allows the kernel density estimate for an angular distribution to be exactly represented by a finite number of its Fourier series coefficients. Distributions of angular quantities, such as gradients, are a central part of several state-of-the-art image processing algorithms, but these distributions are usually described via histograms and therefore lack rotation invariance due to binning artifacts. Replacing histograming with kernel density estimation removes these binning artifacts and can provide a finite-dimensional descriptor of the distribution, provided that the kernel is selected to be bandlimited. In this paper, we present a new band-limited kernel that has the added advantage of being Gaussian-like in the angular domain. We then show that it compares favorably to gradient histograms for patch matching, person detection, and texture segmentation.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2015

Detailing the equivalence between real equiangular tight frames and certain strongly regular graphs

An equiangular tight frame (ETF) is a set of unit vectors whose coherence achieves the Welch bound, and so is as incoherent as possible. They arise in numerous applications. It is well known that real ETFs are equivalent to a certain subclass of strongly regular graphs. In this note, we give some alternative techniques for understanding this equivalence. In a later document, we will use these techniques to further generalize this theory.

math.FA↗

arXiv2015

A generalized Schur-Horn theorem and optimal frame completions

The Schur-Horn theorem is a classical result in matrix analysis which characterizes the existence of positive semidefinite matrices with a given diagonal and spectrum. In recent years, this theorem has been used to characterize the existence of finite frames whose elements have given lengths and whose frame operator has a given spectrum. We provide a new generalization of the Schur-Horn theorem which characterizes the spectra of all possible finite frame completions. That is, we characterize the spectra of the frame operators of the finite frames obtained by adding new vectors of given lengths to an existing frame. We then exploit this characterization to give a new and simple algorithm for computing the optimal such completion.

math.FA↗

arXiv2014

Derandomizing restricted isometries via the Legendre symbol

The restricted isometry property (RIP) is an important matrix condition in compressed sensing, but the best matrix constructions to date use randomness. This paper leverages pseudorandom properties of the Legendre symbol to reduce the number of random bits in an RIP matrix with Bernoulli entries. In this regard, the Legendre symbol is not special---our main result naturally generalizes to any small-bias sample space. We also conjecture that no random bits are necessary for our Legendre symbol--based construction.

math.CO↗

arXiv2013

Phase retrieval with polarization

In many areas of imaging science, it is difficult to measure the phase of linear measurements. As such, one often wishes to reconstruct a signal from intensity measurements, that is, perform phase retrieval. In this paper, we provide a novel measurement design which is inspired by interferometry and exploits certain properties of expander graphs. We also give an efficient phase retrieval procedure, and use recent results in spectral graph theory to produce a stable performance guarantee which rivals the guarantee for PhaseLift in [Candes et al. 2011]. We use numerical simulations to illustrate the performance of our phase retrieval procedure, and we compare reconstruction error and runtime with a common alternating-projections-type procedure.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2013

Phase retrieval from very few measurements

In many applications, signals are measured according to a linear process, but the phases of these measurements are often unreliable or not available. To reconstruct the signal, one must perform a process known as phase retrieval. This paper focuses on completely determining signals with as few intensity measurements as possible, and on efficient phase retrieval algorithms from such measurements. For the case of complex M-dimensional signals, we construct a measurement ensemble of size 4M-4 which yields injective intensity measurements; this is conjectured to be the smallest such ensemble. For the case of real signals, we devise a theory of "almost" injective intensity measurements, and we characterize such ensembles. Later, we show that phase retrieval from M+1 almost injective intensity measurements is NP-hard, indicating that computationally efficient phase retrieval must come at the price of measurement redundancy.

math.FA↗

arXiv2013

Kirkman Equiangular Tight Frames and Codes

An equiangular tight frame (ETF) is a set of unit vectors in a Euclidean space whose coherence is as small as possible, equaling the Welch bound. Also known as Welch-bound-equality sequences, such frames arise in various applications, such as waveform design and compressed sensing. At the moment, there are only two known flexible methods for constructing ETFs: harmonic ETFs are formed by carefully extracting rows from a discrete Fourier transform; Steiner ETFs arise from a tensor-like combination of a combinatorial design and a regular simplex. These two classes seem very different: the vectors in harmonic ETFs have constant amplitude, whereas Steiner ETFs are extremely sparse. We show that they are actually intimately connected: a large class of Steiner ETFs can be unitarily transformed into constant-amplitude frames, dubbed Kirkman ETFs. Moreover, we show that an important class of harmonic ETFs is a subset of an important class of Kirkman ETFs. This connection informs the discussion of both types of frames: some Steiner ETFs can be transformed into constant-amplitude waveforms making them more useful in waveform design; some harmonic ETFs have low spark, making them less desirable for compressed sensing. We conclude by showing that real-valued constant-amplitude ETFs are equivalent to binary codes that achieve the Grey-Rankin bound, and then construct such codes using Kirkman ETFs.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2012

Group-theoretic constructions of erasure-robust frames

In the field of compressed sensing, a key problem remains open: to explicitly construct matrices with the restricted isometry property (RIP) whose performance rivals those generated using random matrix theory. In short, RIP involves estimating the singular values of a combinatorially large number of submatrices, seemingly requiring an enormous amount of computation in even low-dimensional examples. In this paper, we consider a similar problem involving submatrix singular value estimation, namely the problem of explicitly constructing numerically erasure robust frames (NERFs). Such frames are the latest invention in a long line of research concerning the design of linear encoders that are robust against data loss. We begin by focusing on a subtle difference between the definition of a NERF and that of an RIP matrix, one that allows us to introduce a new computational trick for quickly estimating NERF bounds. In short, we estimate these bounds by evaluating the frame analysis operator at every point of an epsilon-net for the unit sphere. We then borrow ideas from the theory of group frames to construct explicit frames and epsilon-nets with such high degrees of symmetry that the requisite number of operator evaluations is greatly reduced. We conclude with numerical results, using these new ideas to quickly produce decent estimates of NERF bounds which would otherwise take an eternity. Though the more important RIP problem remains open, this work nevertheless demonstrates the feasibility of exploiting symmetry to greatly reduce the computational burden of similar combinatorial linear algebra problems.

math.FA↗

arXiv2012

Numerically erasure-robust frames

Given a channel with additive noise and adversarial erasures, the task is to design a frame that allows for stable signal reconstruction from transmitted frame coefficients. To meet these specifications, we introduce numerically erasure-robust frames. We first consider a variety of constructions, including random frames, equiangular tight frames and group frames. Later, we show that arbitrarily large erasure rates necessarily induce numerical instability in signal reconstruction. We conclude with a few observations, including some implications for maximal equiangular tight frames and sparse frames.

math.FA↗

arXiv2012

The road to deterministic matrices with the restricted isometry property

The restricted isometry property (RIP) is a well-known matrix condition that provides state-of-the-art reconstruction guarantees for compressed sensing. While random matrices are known to satisfy this property with high probability, deterministic constructions have found less success. In this paper, we consider various techniques for demonstrating RIP deterministically, some popular and some novel, and we evaluate their performance. In evaluating some techniques, we apply random matrix theory and inadvertently find a simple alternative proof that certain random matrices are RIP. Later, we propose a particular class of matrices as candidates for being RIP, namely, equiangular tight frames (ETFs). Using the known correspondence between real ETFs and strongly regular graphs, we investigate certain combinatorial implications of a real ETF being RIP. Specifically, we give probabilistic intuition for a new bound on the clique number of Paley graphs of prime order, and we conjecture that the corresponding ETFs are RIP in a manner similar to random matrices.

math.FA↗

arXiv2012

Optimal frames and Newton's method

Given a parametrized family of finite frames, we consider the optimization problem of finding the member of this family whose coefficient space most closely contains a given data vector. This nonlinear least squares problem arises naturally in the context of a certain type of radar system. We derive analytic expressions for the first and second partial derivatives of the objective function in question, permitting this optimization problem to be efficiently solved using Newton's method. We also consider how sensitive the location of this minimizer is to noise in the data vector. We further provide conditions under which one should expect the minimizer of this objective function to be unique. We conclude by discussing a related variational-calculus-based approach for solving this frame optimization problem over an interval of time.

math.FA↗

arXiv2012

Spectral Tetris Fusion Frame Constructions

Spectral tetris is a fexible and elementary method to construct unit norm frames with a given frame operator, having all of its eigenvalues greater than or equal to two. One important application of spectral tetris is the construction of fusion frames. We first show how the assumption on the spectrum of the frame operator can be dropped and extend the spectral tetris algorithm to construct unit norm frames with any given spectrum of the frame operator. We then provide a suffcient condition for using this generalization of spectral tetris to construct fusion frames with prescribed spectrum for the fusion frame operator and with prescribed dimensions for the subspaces. This condition is shown to be necessary in the tight case of redundancy greater than two.

math.NA↗

arXiv2011

Fingerprinting with Equiangular Tight Frames

Digital fingerprinting is a framework for marking media files, such as images, music, or movies, with user-specific signatures to deter illegal distribution. Multiple users can collude to produce a forgery that can potentially overcome a fingerprinting system. This paper proposes an equiangular tight frame fingerprint design which is robust to such collusion attacks. We motivate this design by considering digital fingerprinting in terms of compressed sensing. The attack is modeled as linear averaging of multiple marked copies before adding a Gaussian noise vector. The content owner can then determine guilt by exploiting correlation between each user's fingerprint and the forged copy. The worst-case error probability of this detection scheme is analyzed and bounded. Simulation results demonstrate the average-case performance is similar to the performance of orthogonal and simplex fingerprint designs, while accommodating several times as many users.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2011

Constructing all self-adjoint matrices with prescribed spectrum and diagonal

The Schur-Horn Theorem states that there exists a self-adjoint matrix with a given spectrum and diagonal if and only if the spectrum majorizes the diagonal. Though the original proof of this result was nonconstructive, several constructive proofs have subsequently been found. Most of these constructive proofs rely on Givens rotations, and none have been shown to be able to produce every example of such a matrix. We introduce a new construction method that is able to do so. This method is based on recent advances in finite frame theory which show how to construct frames whose frame operator has a given prescribed spectrum and whose vectors have given prescribed lengths. This frame construction requires one to find a sequence of eigensteps, that is, a sequence of interlacing spectra that satisfy certain trace considerations. In this paper, we show how to explicitly construct every such sequence of eigensteps. Here, the key idea is to visualize eigenstep construction as iteratively building a staircase. This visualization leads to an algorithm, dubbed Top Kill, which produces a valid sequence of eigensteps whenever it is possible to do so. We then build on Top Kill to explicitly parametrize the set of all valid eigensteps. This yields an explicit method for constructing all self-adjoint matrices with a given spectrum and diagonal, and moreover all frames whose frame operator has a given spectrum and whose elements have given lengths.

math.FA↗