In several applications in signal processing it has proven useful to decompose a given signal in a multiscale dictionary, for instance to achieve compression by coefficient thresholding or to solve inverse problems. The most popular family of such dictionaries are undoubtedly wavelets which have had a tremendous impact in applied mathematics since Daubechies' construction of orthonormal wavelet bases with compact support in the 1980s. While wavelets are now a well-established tool in numerical signal processing (for instance the JPEG2000 coding standard is based on a wavelet transform) it has been recognized in the past decades that they also possess several shortcomings, in particular with respect to the treatment of multidimensional data where anisotropic structures such as edges in images are typically present. This deficiency of wavelets has given birth to the research area of geometric multiscale analysis where frame constructions which are optimally adapted to anisotropic structures are sought. A milestone in this area has been the construction of curvelet and shearlet frames which are indeed capable of optimally resolving curved singularities in multidimensional data.
In this course we will outline these developments, starting with a short introduction to wavelets and then moving on to more recent constructions of curvelets, shearlets and ridgelets. We will discuss their applicability to diverse problems in signal processing such as compression, denoising, morphological component analysis, or the solution of transport PDEs. Implementation aspects will also be covered. (Slides in attachment).[-]

Uncertainty principles go back to the early years of quantum mechanics. Originally introduced to describe the impossibility for a function to be sharply localized in both the direct and Fourier spaces, localization being measured by variance, it has been generalized to many other situations, including different representation spaces and different localization measures.
In this talk we first review classical results on variance uncertainty inequalities (in particular Heisenberg, Robertson and Breitenberger inequalities). We then focus on discrete (and in particular finite-dimensional) situations, where variance has to be replaced with more suitable localization measures. We then present recent results on support and entropic inequalities, describing joint localization properties of vector expansions with respect to two frames.

Keywords: uncertainty principle - variance of a function - Heisenberg inequality - support inequalities - entropic inequalities[-]

In this conference, I start by presenting the first applications and developments of wavelet methods made in Marseille in 1985 in the framework of sounds and music. A description of the earliest wavelet transform implementation using the SYTER processor is given followed by a discussion related to the first signal analysis investigations. Sound examples of the initial sound transformations obtained by altering the wavelet representation are further presented. Then methods aiming at estimating sound synthesis parameters such as amplitude and frequency modulation laws are described. Finally, new challenges brought by these early works are presented, focusing on the relationship between low-level synthesis parameters and sound perception and cognition. An example of the use of the wavelet transforms to estimate sound invariants related to the evocation of the "object" and the "action" is presented.

Keywords : sound and music - first wavelet applications - signal analysis - sound synthesis - fast wavelet algorithms - instantaneous frequency estimation - sound invariants[-]

We start with a brief historical account of wavelets and of the way they shattered some of the preconceptions of the 20th century theory of statistical signal processing that is founded on the Gaussian hypothesis. The advent of wavelets led to the emergence of the concept of sparsity and resulted in important advances in image processing, compression, and the resolution of ill-posed inverse problems, including compressed sensing. In support of this change in paradigm, we introduce an extended class of stochastic processes specified by a generic (non-Gaussian) innovation model or, equivalently, as solutions of linear stochastic differential equations driven by white Lévy noise. Starting from first principles, we prove that the solutions of such equations are either Gaussian or sparse, at the exclusion of any other behavior. Moreover, we show that these processes admit a representation in a matched wavelet basis that is "sparse" and (approximately) decoupled. The proposed model lends itself well to an analytic treatment. It also has a strong predictive power in that it justifies the type of sparsity-promoting reconstruction methods that are currently being deployed in the field.

Keywords: wavelets - fractals - stochastic processes - sparsity - independent component analysis - differential operators - iterative thresholding - infinitely divisible laws - Lévy processes[-]

In this talk, we will briefly look at the history of wavelets, from signal processing algorithms originating in speech and image processing, and harmonic analysis constructions of orthonormal bases. We review the promises, the achievements, and some of the limitations of wavelet applications, with JPEG and JPEG2000 as examples. We then take two key insights from the wavelet and signal processing experience, namely the time-frequency-scale view of the world, and the sparsity property of wavelet expansions, and present two recent results. First, we show new bounds for the time-frequency spread of sequences, and construct maximally compact sequences. Interestingly they differ from sampled Gaussians. Next, we review work on sampling of finite rate of innovation signals, which are sparse continuous-time signals for which sampling theorems are possible. We conclude by arguing that the interface of signal processing and applied harmonic analysis has been both fruitful and fun, and try to identify lessons learned from this experience.

Keywords: wavelets – filter banks - subband coding – uncertainty principle – sampling theory – sparse sampling[-]

Consider a non-linear function $G(X_t)$ where $X_t$ is a stationary Gaussian sequence with long-range dependence. The usual reduction principle states that the partial sums of $G(X_t)$ behave asymptotically like the partial sums of the first term in the expansion of $G$ in Hermite polynomials. In the context of the wavelet estimation of the long-range dependence parameter, one replaces the partial sums of $G(X_t)$ by the wavelet scalogram, namely the partial sum of squares of the wavelet coefficients. Is there a reduction principle in the wavelet setting, namely is the asymptotic behavior of the scalogram for $G(X_t)$ the same as that for the first term in the expansion of $G$ in Hermite polynomial? The answer is negative in general. This paper provides a minimal growth condition on the scales of the wavelet coefficients which ensures that the reduction principle also holds for the scalogram. The results are applied to testing the hypothesis that the long-range dependence parameter takes a specific value. Joint work with François Roueff and Murad S. Taqqu

Keywords: long-range dependence; long memory; self-similarity; wavelet transform; estimation; hypothesis
testing[-]

In several applications in signal processing it has proven useful to decompose a given signal in a multiscale dictionary, for instance to achieve compression by coefficient thresholding or to solve inverse problems. The most popular family of such dictionaries are undoubtedly wavelets which have had a tremendous impact in applied mathematics since Daubechies' construction of orthonormal wavelet bases with compact support in the 1980s. While wavelets are now a well-established tool in numerical signal processing (for instance the JPEG2000 coding standard is based on a wavelet transform) it has been recognized in the past decades that they also possess several shortcomings, in particular with respect to the treatment of multidimensional data where anisotropic structures such as edges in images are typically present. This deficiency of wavelets has given birth to the research area of geometric multiscale analysis where frame constructions which are optimally adapted to anisotropic structures are sought. A milestone in this area has been the construction of curvelet and shearlet frames which are indeed capable of optimally resolving curved singularities in multidimensional data.
In this course we will outline these developments, starting with a short introduction to wavelets and then moving on to more recent constructions of curvelets, shearlets and ridgelets. We will discuss their applicability to diverse problems in signal processing such as compression, denoising, morphological component analysis, or the solution of transport PDEs. Implementation aspects will also be covered. (Slides in attachment).[-]

Coorbit theory was developed in the late eighties as a unifying principle covering (possible non-)orthogonal frame expansions in the wavelet and in the time-frequency context. Very much in the spirit of « coherent frames » or also reproducing kernels for a Moebius invariant Banach space of analytic functions one can describe a family of function spaces associated with a given integrable and irreducible group representation on a Hilbert space by its generalized wavelet transform, and obtain (among others) atomic decomposition results for the resulting spaces. The theory was flexible enough to cover also more recent examples, such as voice transforms related to the Blaschke group or the spaces (and frames) related to the shearlet transform.
As time permits I will talk also on the role of Banach frames and the usefulness of Banach Gelfand triples, especially the one based on the Segal algebra $S_0(G)$, which happens to be a modulation space, in fact the minimal among all time-frequency invariant non-trivial function spaces.

Keywords: wavelet theory - time-frequency analysis - modulation spaces - Banach-Gelfand-triples - Toeplitz operators - atomic decompositions - function spaces - shearlet transform - Blaschke group[-]