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The Internet of Things paradigm heavily relies on a network of a massive number of machine-type devices (MTDs) that monitor changes in various phenomena. Consequently, MTDs are randomly activated at different times whenever a change occurs. This essentially results in relatively few MTDs being active simultaneously compared to the entire network, resembling targeted sampling in compressed sensing. Therefore, signal recovery in machine-type communications is addressed through joint user activity detection and channel estimation algorithms built using compressed sensing theory. However, most of these algorithms follow a two-stage procedure in which a channel is first estimated and later mapped to find active users. This approach is inefficient because the estimated channel information is subsequently discarded. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a novel covariance-learning matching pursuit algorithm that bypasses explicit channel estimation. Instead, it focuses on estimating the indices of the active users greedily. Simulation results presented in terms of probability of miss detection, exact recovery rate, and computational complexity validate the proposed technique's superior performance and efficiency., Comment: submitted to IEEE IoT journal

We propose greedy Capon beamformer (GBF) for direction finding of narrow-band sources present in the array's viewing field. After defining the grid covering the location search space, the algorithm greedily builds the interference-plus-noise covariance matrix by identifying a high-power source on the grid using Capon's principle of maximizing the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) while enforcing unit gain towards the signal of interest. An estimate of the power of the detected source is derived by exploiting the unit power constraint, which subsequently allows to update the noise covariance matrix by simple rank-1 matrix addition composed of outerproduct of the selected steering matrix with itself scaled by the signal power estimate. Our numerical examples demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed GCB in direction finding where it perform favourably compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms under a broad variety of settings. Furthermore, GCB estimates of direction-of-arrivals (DOAs) are very fast to compute., Comment: Submitted for publication

In the Multiple Measurements Vector (MMV) model, measurement vectors are connected to unknown, jointly sparse signal vectors through a linear regression model employing a single known measurement matrix (or dictionary). Typically, the number of atoms (columns of the dictionary) is greater than the number measurements and the sparse signal recovery problem is generally ill-posed. In this paper, we treat the signals and measurement noise as independent Gaussian random vectors with unknown signal covariance matrix and noise variance, respectively, and derive fixed point (FP) equation for solving the likelihood equation for signal powers, thereby enabling the recovery of the sparse signal support (sources with non-zero variances). Two practical algorithms, a block coordinate descent (BCD) and a cyclic coordinate descent (CCD) algorithms, that leverage on the FP characterization of the likelihood equation are then proposed. Additionally, a greedy pursuit method, analogous to popular simultaneous orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP), is introduced. Our numerical examples demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed covariance learning (CL) algorithms both in classic sparse signal recovery as well as in direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation problems where they perform favourably compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms under a broad variety of settings.

This chapter reviews methods for linear shrinkage of the sample covariance matrix (SCM) and matrices (SCM-s) under elliptical distributions in single and multiple populations settings, respectively. In the single sample setting a popular linear shrinkage estimator is defined as a linear combination of the sample covariance matrix (SCM) with a scaled identity matrix. The optimal shrinkage coefficients minimizing the mean squared error (MSE) under elliptical sampling are shown to be functions of few key parameters only, such as elliptical kurtosis and sphericity parameter. Similar results and estimators are derived for multiple population setting and applications of the studied shrinkage estimators are illustrated in portfolio optimization.

We propose estimating the scale parameter (mean of the eigenvalues) of the scatter matrix of an unspecified elliptically symmetric distribution using weights obtained by solving Tyler's M-estimator of the scatter matrix. The proposed Tyler's weights-based estimate (TWE) of scale is then used to construct an affine equivariant Tyler's M-estimator as a weighted sample covariance matrix using normalized Tyler's weights. We then develop a unified framework for estimating the unknown tail parameter of the elliptical distribution (such as the degrees of freedom (d.o.f.) $\nu$ of the multivariate $t$ (MVT) distribution). Using the proposed TWE of scale, a new robust estimate of the d.o.f. parameter of MVT distribution is proposed with excellent performance in heavy-tailed scenarios, outperforming other competing methods. R-package is available that implements the proposed method.

Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is a widely used iterative algorithm for computing (local) maximum likelihood estimate (MLE). It can be used in an extensive range of problems, including the clustering of data based on the Gaussian mixture model (GMM). Numerical instability and convergence problems may arise in situations where the sample size is not much larger than the data dimensionality. In such low sample support (LSS) settings, the covariance matrix update in the EM-GMM algorithm may become singular or poorly conditioned, causing the algorithm to crash. On the other hand, in many signal processing problems, a priori information can be available indicating certain structures for different cluster covariance matrices. In this paper, we present a regularized EM algorithm for GMM-s that can make efficient use of such prior knowledge as well as cope with LSS situations. The method aims to maximize a penalized GMM likelihood where regularized estimation may be used to ensure positive definiteness of covariance matrix updates and shrink the estimators towards some structured target covariance matrices. We show that the theoretical guarantees of convergence hold, leading to better performing EM algorithm for structured covariance matrix models or with low sample settings., Comment: ICASSP Conference, 4 pages, 8 figures

A robust and sparse Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimator is derived for array data that follows a Complex Elliptically Symmetric (CES) distribution with zero-mean and finite second-order moments. The derivation allows to choose the loss function and four loss functions are discussed in detail: the Gauss loss which is the Maximum-Likelihood (ML) loss for the circularly symmetric complex Gaussian distribution, the ML-loss for the complex multivariate $t$-distribution (MVT) with $\nu$ degrees of freedom, as well as Huber and Tyler loss functions. For Gauss loss, the method reduces to Sparse Bayesian Learning (SBL). The root mean square DOA error of the derived estimators is discussed for Gaussian, MVT, and $\epsilon$-contaminated data. The robust SBL estimators perform well for all cases and nearly identical with classical SBL for Gaussian noise.

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), particularly Graph Convolutional Neural Networks (GCNNs), have emerged as pivotal instruments in machine learning and signal processing for processing graph-structured data. This paper proposes an analysis framework to investigate the sensitivity of GCNNs to probabilistic graph perturbations, directly impacting the graph shift operator (GSO). Our study establishes tight expected GSO error bounds, which are explicitly linked to the error model parameters, and reveals a linear relationship between GSO perturbations and the resulting output differences at each layer of GCNNs. This linearity demonstrates that a single-layer GCNN maintains stability under graph edge perturbations, provided that the GSO errors remain bounded, regardless of the perturbation scale. For multilayer GCNNs, the dependency of system's output difference on GSO perturbations is shown to be a recursion of linearity. Finally, we exemplify the framework with the Graph Isomorphism Network (GIN) and Simple Graph Convolution Network (SGCN). Experiments validate our theoretical derivations and the effectiveness of our approach.

Covariance matrix tapers have a long history in signal processing and related fields. Examples of applications include autoregressive models (promoting a banded structure) or beamforming (widening the spectral null width associated with an interferer). In this paper, the focus is on high-dimensional setting where the dimension $p$ is high, while the data aspect ratio $n/p$ is low. We propose an estimator called Tabasco (TApered or BAnded Shrinkage COvariance matrix) that shrinks the tapered sample covariance matrix towards a scaled identity matrix. We derive optimal and estimated (data adaptive) regularization parameters that are designed to minimize the mean squared error (MSE) between the proposed shrinkage estimator and the true covariance matrix. These parameters are derived under the general assumption that the data is sampled from an unspecified elliptically symmetric distribution with finite 4th order moments (both real- and complex-valued cases are addressed). Simulation studies show that the proposed Tabasco outperforms all competing tapering covariance matrix estimators in diverse setups. A space-time adaptive processing (STAP) application also illustrates the benefit of the proposed estimator in a practical signal processing setup.

We derive the form of the variance-covariance matrix for any affine equivariant matrix-valued statistics when sampling from complex elliptical distributions. We then use this result to derive the variance-covariance matrix of the sample covariance matrix (SCM) as well as its theoretical mean squared error (MSE) when finite fourth-order moments exist. Finally, illustrative examples of the formulas are presented.

Multimodal image fusion aims to combine relevant information from images acquired with different sensors. In medical imaging, fused images play an essential role in both standard and automated diagnosis. In this paper, we propose a novel multimodal image fusion method based on coupled dictionary learning. The proposed method is general and can be employed for different medical imaging modalities. Unlike many current medical fusion methods, the proposed approach does not suffer from intensity attenuation nor loss of critical information. Specifically, the images to be fused are decomposed into coupled and independent components estimated using sparse representations with identical supports and a Pearson correlation constraint, respectively. An alternating minimization algorithm is designed to solve the resulting optimization problem. The final fusion step uses the max-absolute-value rule. Experiments are conducted using various pairs of multimodal inputs, including real MR-CT and MR-PET images. The resulting performance and execution times show the competitiveness of the proposed method in comparison with state-of-the-art medical image fusion methods.

The estimation of covariance matrices of multiple classes with limited training data is a difficult problem. The sample covariance matrix (SCM) is known to perform poorly when the number of variables is large compared to the available number of samples. In order to reduce the mean squared error (MSE) of the SCM, regularized (shrinkage) SCM estimators are often used. In this work, we consider regularized SCM (RSCM) estimators for multiclass problems that couple together two different target matrices for regularization: the pooled (average) SCM of the classes and the scaled identity matrix. Regularization toward the pooled SCM is beneficial when the population covariances are similar, whereas regularization toward the identity matrix guarantees that the estimators are positive definite. We derive the MSE optimal tuning parameters for the estimators as well as propose a method for their estimation under the assumption that the class populations follow (unspecified) elliptical distributions with finite fourth-order moments. The MSE performance of the proposed coupled RSCMs are evaluated with simulations and in a regularized discriminant analysis (RDA) classification set-up on real data. The results based on three different real data sets indicate comparable performance to cross-validation but with a significant speed-up in computation time.

Huber's criterion can be used for robust joint estimation of regression and scale parameters in the linear model. Huber's (Huber, 1981) motivation for introducing the criterion stemmed from non-convexity of the joint maximum likelihood objective function as well as non-robustness (unbounded influence function) of the associated ML-estimate of scale. In this paper, we illustrate how the original algorithm proposed by Huber can be set within the block-wise minimization majorization framework. In addition, we propose novel data-adaptive step sizes for both the location and scale, which are further improving the convergence. We then illustrate how Huber's criterion can be used for sparse learning of underdetermined linear model using the iterative hard thresholding approach. We illustrate the usefulness of the algorithms in an image denoising application and simulation studies., Comment: To appear in International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP), 2020

In graph signal processing (GSP), prior information on the dependencies in the signal is collected in a graph which is then used when processing or analyzing the signal. Blind source separation (BSS) techniques have been developed and analyzed in different domains, but for graph signals the research on BSS is still in its infancy. In this paper, this gap is filled with two contributions. First, a nonparametric BSS method, which is relevant to the GSP framework, is refined, the Cram\'{e}r-Rao bound (CRB) for mixing and unmixing matrix estimators in the case of Gaussian moving average graph signals is derived, and for studying the achievability of the CRB, a new parametric method for BSS of Gaussian moving average graph signals is introduced. Second, we also consider BSS of non-Gaussian graph signals and two methods are proposed. Identifiability conditions show that utilizing both graph structure and non-Gaussianity provides a more robust approach than methods which are based on only either graph dependencies or non-Gaussianity. It is also demonstrated by numerical study that the proposed methods are more efficient in separating non-Gaussian graph signals., Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, submitted to IEEE Trans. Signal Processing on Aug. 2020

We consider the problem of estimating high-dimensional covariance matrices of $K$-populations or classes in the setting where the sample sizes are comparable to the data dimension. We propose estimating each class covariance matrix as a distinct linear combination of all class sample covariance matrices. This approach is shown to reduce the estimation error when the sample sizes are limited, and the true class covariance matrices share a somewhat similar structure. We develop an effective method for estimating the coefficients in the linear combination that minimize the mean squared error under the general assumption that the samples are drawn from (unspecified) elliptically symmetric distributions possessing finite fourth-order moments. To this end, we utilize the spatial sign covariance matrix, which we show (under rather general conditions) to be an asymptotically unbiased estimator of the normalized covariance matrix as the dimension grows to infinity. We also show how the proposed method can be used in choosing the regularization parameters for multiple target matrices in a single class covariance matrix estimation problem. We assess the proposed method via numerical simulation studies including an application in global minimum variance portfolio optimization using real stock data.

A highly popular regularized (shrinkage) covariance matrix estimator is the shrinkage sample covariance matrix (SCM) which shares the same set of eigenvectors as the SCM but shrinks its eigenvalues toward the grand mean of the eigenvalues of the SCM. In this paper, a more general approach is considered in which the SCM is replaced by an M-estimator of scatter matrix and a fully automatic data adaptive method to compute the optimal shrinkage parameter with minimum mean squared error is proposed. Our approach permits the use of any weight function such as Gaussian, Huber's, Tyler's, or t-weight functions, all of which are commonly used in M-estimation framework. Our simulation examples illustrate that shrinkage M-estimators based on the proposed optimal tuning combined with robust weight function do not loose in performance to shrinkage SCM estimator when the data is Gaussian, but provide significantly improved performance when the data is sampled from an unspecified heavy-tailed elliptically symmetric distribution. Also, real-world and synthetic stock market data validate the performance of the proposed method in practical applications., Comment: A supplementary report is available at: http://users.spa.aalto.fi/esollila/shrinkM/supplement.pdf

We propose a compressive classification framework for settings where the data dimensionality is significantly higher than the sample size. The proposed method, referred to as compressive regularized discriminant analysis (CRDA) is based on linear discriminant analysis and has the ability to select significant features by using joint-sparsity promoting hard thresholding in the discriminant rule. Since the number of features is larger than the sample size, the method also uses state-of-the-art regularized sample covariance matrix estimators. Several analysis examples on real data sets, including image, speech signal and gene expression data illustrate the promising improvements offered by the proposed CRDA classifier in practise. Overall, the proposed method gives fewer misclassification errors than its competitors, while at the same time achieving accurate feature selection results. The open-source R package and MATLAB toolbox of the proposed method (named compressiveRDA) is freely available.

A popular regularized (shrinkage) covariance estimator is the shrinkage sample covariance matrix (SCM) which shares the same set of eigenvectors as the SCM but shrinks its eigenvalues toward its grand mean. In this paper, a more general approach is considered in which the SCM is replaced by an M-estimator of scatter matrix and a fully automatic data adaptive method to compute the optimal shrinkage parameter with minimum mean squared error is proposed. Our approach permits the use of any weight function such as Gaussian, Huber's, or $t$ weight functions, all of which are commonly used in M-estimation framework. Our simulation examples illustrate that shrinkage M-estimators based on the proposed optimal tuning combined with robust weight function do not loose in performance to shrinkage SCM estimator when the data is Gaussian, but provide significantly improved performance when the data is sampled from a heavy-tailed distribution., Comment: To appear in Proc. IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2020), May 4 - 8, Barcelona, Spain, 2020

The first step for any graph signal processing (GSP) procedure is to learn the graph signal representation, i.e., to capture the dependence structure of the data into an adjacency matrix. Indeed, the adjacency matrix is typically not known a priori and has to be learned. However, it is learned with errors. A little attention has been paid to modelling such errors in the adjacency matrix, and studying their effects on GSP methods. However, modelling errors in the adjacency matrix will enable both to study the graph error effects in GSP and to develop robust GSP algorithms. In this paper, we therefore introduce practically justifiable graph error models. We also study, both analytically when possible and numerically, the graph error effect on the performance of GSP methods in different types of problems such as filtering of graph signals and independent component analysis of graph signals (graph decorrelation)., Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, Submitted to IEEE journal on January 2019

This paper considers the problem of estimating a high-dimensional (HD) covariance matrix when the sample size is smaller, or not much larger, than the dimensionality of the data, which could potentially be very large. We develop a regularized sample covariance matrix (RSCM) estimator which can be applied in commonly occurring sparse data problems. The proposed RSCM estimator is based on estimators of the unknown optimal (oracle) shrinkage parameters that yield the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) between the RSCM and the true covariance matrix when the data is sampled from an unspecified elliptically symmetric distribution. We propose two variants of the RSCM estimator which differ in the approach in which they estimate the underlying sphericity parameter involved in the theoretical optimal shrinkage parameter. The performance of the proposed RSCM estimators are evaluated with numerical simulation studies. In particular when the sample sizes are low, the proposed RSCM estimators often show a significant improvement over the conventional RSCM estimator by Ledoit and Wolf (2004). We further evaluate the performance of the proposed estimators in classification and portfolio optimization problems with real data wherein the proposed methods are able to outperform the benchmark methods.

This paper proposes a novel method for model selection in linear regression by utilizing the solution path of $\ell_1$ regularized least-squares (LS) approach (i.e., Lasso). This method applies the complex-valued least angle regression and shrinkage (c-LARS) algorithm coupled with a generalized information criterion (GIC) and referred to as the c-LARS-GIC method. c-LARS-GIC is a two-stage procedure, where firstly precise values of the regularization parameter, called knots, at which a new predictor variable enters (or leaves) the active set are computed in the Lasso solution path. Active sets provide a nested sequence of regression models and GIC then selects the best model. The sparsity order of the chosen model serves as an estimate of the model order and the LS fit based only on the active set of the model provides an estimate of the regression parameter vector. We then consider a source localization problem, where the aim is to detect the number of impinging source waveforms at a sensor array as well to estimate their direction-of-arrivals (DoA-s) using only a single-snapshot measurement. We illustrate via simulations that, after formulating the problem as a grid-based sparse signal reconstruction problem, the proposed c-LARS-GIC method detects the number of sources with high probability while at the same time it provides accurate estimates of source locations., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, To appear in the Proceedings of the 26th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2018)

This paper proposes efficient algorithms for accurate recovery of direction-of-arrival (DoA) of sources from single-snapshot measurements using compressed beamforming (CBF). In CBF, the conventional sensor array signal model is cast as an underdetermined complex-valued linear regression model and sparse signal recovery methods are used for solving the DoA finding problem. We develop a complex-valued pathwise weighted elastic net (c-PW-WEN) algorithm that finds solutions at knots of penalty parameter values over a path (or grid) of EN tuning parameter values. c-PW-WEN also computes Lasso or weighted Lasso in its path. We then propose a sequential adaptive EN (SAEN) method that is based on c-PW-WEN algorithm with adaptive weights that depend on the previous solution. Extensive simulation studies illustrate that SAEN improves the probability of exact recovery of true support compared to conventional sparse signal recovery approaches such as Lasso, elastic net or orthogonal matching pursuit in several challenging multiple target scenarios. The effectiveness of SAEN is more pronounced in the presence of high mutual coherence., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, in the publication to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

We propose a modification of linear discriminant analysis, referred to as compressive regularized discriminant analysis (CRDA), for analysis of high-dimensional datasets. CRDA is specially designed for feature elimination purpose and can be used as gene selection method in microarray studies. CRDA lends ideas from $\ell_{q,1}$ norm minimization algorithms in the multiple measurement vectors (MMV) model and utilizes joint-sparsity promoting hard thresholding for feature elimination. A regularization of the sample covariance matrix is also needed as we consider the challenging scenario where the number of features (variables) is comparable or exceeding the sample size of the training dataset. A simulation study and four examples of real-life microarray datasets evaluate the performances of CRDA based classifiers. Overall, the proposed method gives fewer misclassification errors than its competitors, while at the same time achieving accurate feature selection., Comment: 5 pages, 2018 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing 15-20 April 2018 | Calgary, Alberta, Canada

We derive an optimal shrinkage sample covariance matrix (SCM) estimator which is suitable for high dimensional problems and when sampling from an unspecified elliptically symmetric distribution. Specifically, we derive the optimal (oracle) shrinkage parameters that obtain the minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) between the shrinkage SCM and the true covariance matrix when sampling from an elliptical distribution. Subsequently, we show how the oracle shrinkage parameters can be consistently estimated under the random matrix theory regime. Simulations show the advantage of the proposed estimator over the conventional shrinkage SCM estimator due to Ledoit and Wolf (2004). The proposed shrinkage SCM estimator often provides significantly better performance than the Ledoit-Wolf estimator and has the advantage that consistency is guaranteed over the whole class of elliptical distributions with finite 4th order moments., Comment: Accepted in the 25th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2017), published by EURASIP, scheduled for Aug. 28 - Sep. 2 in Kos island, Greece

Least angle regression (LARS) by Efron et al. (2004) is a novel method for constructing the piece-wise linear path of Lasso solutions. For several years, it remained also as the de facto method for computing the Lasso solution before more sophisticated optimization algorithms preceded it. LARS method has recently again increased its popularity due to its ability to find the values of the penalty parameters, called knots, at which a new parameter enters the active set of non-zero coefficients. Significance test for the Lasso by Lockhart et al. (2014), for example, requires solving the knots via the LARS algorithm. Elastic net (EN), on the other hand, is a highly popular extension of Lasso that uses a linear combination of Lasso and ridge regression penalties. In this paper, we propose a new novel algorithm, called pathwise (PW-)LARS-EN, that is able to compute the EN knots over a grid of EN tuning parameter {\alpha} values. The developed PW-LARS-EN algorithm decreases the EN tuning parameter and exploits the previously found knot values and the original LARS algorithm. A covariance test statistic for the Lasso is then generalized to the EN for testing the significance of the predictors. Our simulation studies validate the fact that the test statistic has an asymptotic Exp(1) distribution., Comment: 5 pages, 25th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2017)

A common assumption when sampling $p$-dimensional observations from $K$ distinct group is the equality of the covariance matrices. In this paper, we propose two penalized $M$-estimation approaches for the estimation of the covariance or scatter matrices under the broader assumption that they may simply be close to each other, and hence roughly deviate from some positive definite "center". The first approach begins by generating a pooled $M$-estimator of scatter based on all the data, followed by a penalised $M$-estimator of scatter for each group, with the penalty term chosen so that the individual scatter matrices are shrunk towards the pooled scatter matrix. In the second approach, we minimize the sum of the individual group $M$-estimation cost functions together with an additive joint penalty term which enforces some similarity between the individual scatter estimators, i.e. shrinkage towards a mutual center. In both approaches, we utilize the concept of geodesic convexity to prove the existence and uniqueness of the penalized solution under general conditions. We consider three specific penalty functions based on the Euclidean, the Riemannian, and the Kullback-Leibler distances. In the second approach, the distance based penalties are shown to lead to estimators of the mutual center that are related to the arithmetic, the Riemannian and the harmonic means of positive definite matrices, respectively. A penalty based on an ellipticity measure is also considered which is particularly useful for shape matrix estimators. Fixed point equations are derived for each penalty function and the benefits of the estimators are illustrated in regularized discriminant analysis problem., Comment: Submitted to Journal of Multivariate Analysis (under review)

The Lasso (Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator) has been a popular technique for simultaneous linear regression estimation and variable selection. In this paper, we propose a new novel approach for robust Lasso that follows the spirit of M-estimation. We define $M$-Lasso estimates of regression and scale as solutions to generalized zero subgradient equations. Another unique feature of this paper is that we consider complex-valued measurements and regression parameters, which requires careful mathematical characterization of the problem. An explicit and efficient algorithm for computing the $M$-Lasso solution is proposed that has comparable computational complexity as state-of-the-art algorithm for computing the Lasso solution. Usefulness of the $M$-Lasso method is illustrated for direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation with sensor arrays in a single snapshot case., Comment: Paper has appeared in the Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP'2016), Davos, Switzerland, April 10-15, 2016

In this paper, we generalize Huber's criterion to multichannel sparse recovery problem of complex-valued measurements where the objective is to find good recovery of jointly sparse unknown signal vectors from the given multiple measurement vectors which are different linear combinations of the same known elementary vectors. This requires careful characterization of robust complex-valued loss functions as well as Huber's criterion function for the multivariate sparse regression problem. We devise a greedy algorithm based on simultaneous normalized iterative hard thresholding (SNIHT) algorithm. Unlike the conventional SNIHT method, our algorithm, referred to as HUB-SNIHT, is robust under heavy-tailed non-Gaussian noise conditions, yet has a negligible performance loss compared to SNIHT under Gaussian noise. Usefulness of the method is illustrated in source localization application with sensor arrays., Comment: To appear in CoSeRa'15 (Pisa, Italy, June 16-19, 2015). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1502.02441

In this paper we address the problem of performing statistical inference for large scale data sets i.e., Big Data. The volume and dimensionality of the data may be so high that it cannot be processed or stored in a single computing node. We propose a scalable, statistically robust and computationally efficient bootstrap method, compatible with distributed processing and storage systems. Bootstrap resamples are constructed with smaller number of distinct data points on multiple disjoint subsets of data, similarly to the bag of little bootstrap method (BLB) [1]. Then significant savings in computation is achieved by avoiding the re-computation of the estimator for each bootstrap sample. Instead, a computationally efficient fixed-point estimation equation is analytically solved via a smart approximation following the Fast and Robust Bootstrap method (FRB) [2]. Our proposed bootstrap method facilitates the use of highly robust statistical methods in analyzing large scale data sets. The favorable statistical properties of the method are established analytically. Numerical examples demonstrate scalability, low complexity and robust statistical performance of the method in analyzing large data sets., Comment: This paper is submitted for publication in IEEE Transactions On Signal Processing, 8 pages, 8 figures

We consider multichannel sparse recovery problem where the objective is to find good recovery of jointly sparse unknown signal vectors from the given multiple measurement vectors which are different linear combinations of the same known elementary vectors. Many popular greedy or convex algorithms perform poorly under non-Gaussian heavy-tailed noise conditions or in the face of outliers. In this paper, we propose the usage of mixed $\ell_{p,q}$ norms on data fidelity (residual matrix) term and the conventional $\ell_{0,2}$-norm constraint on the signal matrix to promote row-sparsity. We devise a greedy pursuit algorithm based on simultaneous normalized iterative hard thresholding (SNIHT) algorithm. Simulation studies highlight the effectiveness of the proposed approaches to cope with different noise environments (i.i.d., row i.i.d, etc) and outliers. Usefulness of the methods are illustrated in source localization application with sensor arrays., Comment: Paper appears in Proc. European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO'15), Nice, France, Aug 31 -- Sep 4, 2015

In this paper, a general class of regularized $M$-estimators of scatter matrix are proposed which are suitable also for low or insufficient sample support (small $n$ and large $p$) problems. The considered class constitutes a natural generalization of $M$-estimators of scatter matrix (Maronna, 1976) and are defined as a solution to a penalized $M$-estimation cost function that depend on a pair $(\alpha,\beta)$ of regularization parameters. We derive general conditions for uniqueness of the solution using concept of geodesic convexity. Since these conditions do not include Tyler's $M$-estimator, necessary and sufficient conditions for uniqueness of the penalized Tyler's cost function are established separately. For the regularized Tyler's $M$-estimator, we also derive a simple, closed form and data dependent solution for choosing the regularization parameter based on shape matrix matching in the mean squared sense. An iterative algorithm that converges to the solution of the regularized $M$-estimating equation is also provided. Finally, some simulations studies illustrate the improved accuracy of the proposed regularized $M$-estimators of scatter compared to their non-regularized counterparts in low sample support problems. An example of radar detection using normalized matched filter (NMF) illustrate that an adaptive NMF detector based on regularized $M$-estimators are able to maintain accurately the preset CFAR level and at at the same time provide similar probability of detection as the (theoretical) NMF detector., Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (contains a corrected proof of convergence of the proposed iterative algorithm)

Compressed sensing (CS) or sparse signal reconstruction (SSR) is a signal processing technique that exploits the fact that acquired data can have a sparse representation in some basis. One popular technique to reconstruct or approximate the unknown sparse signal is the iterative hard thresholding (IHT) which however performs very poorly under non-Gaussian noise conditions or in the face of outliers (gross errors). In this paper, we propose a robust IHT method based on ideas from $M$-estimation that estimates the sparse signal and the scale of the error distribution simultaneously. The method has a negligible performance loss compared to IHT under Gaussian noise, but superior performance under heavy-tailed non-Gaussian noise conditions., Comment: To appear in Proc. of ISCCSP 2014

Independent component analysis (ICA) has become a popular multivariate analysis and signal processing technique with diverse applications. This paper is targeted at discussing theoretical large sample properties of ICA unmixing matrix functionals. We provide a formal definition of unmixing matrix functional and consider two popular estimators in detail: the family based on two scatter matrices with the independence property (e.g., FOBI estimator) and the family of deflation-based fastICA estimators. The limiting behavior of the corresponding estimates is discussed and the asymptotic normality of the deflation-based fastICA estimate is proven under general assumptions. Furthermore, properties of several performance indices commonly used for comparison of different unmixing matrix estimates are discussed and a new performance index is proposed. The proposed index fullfills three desirable features which promote its use in practice and distinguish it from others. Namely, the index possesses an easy interpretation, is fast to compute and its asymptotic properties can be inferred from asymptotics of the unmixing matrix estimate. We illustrate the derived asymptotical results and the use of the proposed index with a small simulation study.