IEEE SECON 2015 Posters: Twelfth Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON)
Frequency-Selective Signal Sensing with
Sub-Nyquist Uniform Sampling Scheme
Jacek Pierzchlewski, Thomas Arildsen
Aalborg University, Faculty of Engineering and Science,
Department of Electronic Systems, Fredrik Bajers Vej 7, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark
jap@es.aau.dk, tha@es.aau.dk
Abstract—In this paper the authors discuss a problem of
acquisition and reconstruction of a signal polluted by adjacent–
channel interference. The authors propose a method to find a
sub-Nyquist uniform sampling pattern which allows for correct
reconstruction of selected frequencies. The method is inspired
by the Restricted Isometry Property, which is known from the
field of compressed sensing. Then, compressed sensing is used
to successfully reconstruct a wanted signal even if some of the
uniform samples were randomly lost, e. g. due to ADC saturation.
An experiment which tests the proposed method in practice is
presented.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The last decade brought a new concept of sub-Nyquist
signal acquisition known as compressed sensing (CS) [1]–[5].
Compressed sensing was found useful in numerous applica-
tions, one of them is a low-pass frequency-selective signal
sampling. In this problem a wanted signal is polluted by
an unwanted adjacent-channel interference (Fig. 1). There is
almost no knowledge about positions of the signals, except
the frequency fb which separates the wanted signal from the
unwanted interference. In [6] the authors showed that CS
can be used to digitally filter out the wanted signal without
increasing the sampling frequency to the Nyquist rate of
the polluted signal. Nevertheless, applying CS in practice is
limited by the required dynamic range of analog-to-digital
converters (ADC) and a need of randomized sensing [5], which
is problematic in the current state-of-the-art ADCs [8].
Wanted signal |A| Unwanted
interference
f R1 usually requires a complex optimization algorithm. An 1
–f –f + fb + fx
x b
Fig. 1: Signal setup considered in this paper. Wanted signal is
polluted by unwanted interference
In this paper the authors present surprising results in which
a sub-Nyquist uniform sampling is applied to a signal which
is polluted by adjacent-channel interference (as on Fig. 1), and
then the wanted part of the signal is successfully reconstructed.
The authors show how to find such a uniform sampling pattern.
Furthermore, the signal can be successfully reconstructed also
when a part of the uniform samples is lost (e. g. due to a
limited dynamic range of ADC). Research on this topic is in
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progress and may bring novel, more practical solutions to CS
signal acquisition.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II discusses
signal processing methods used in the paper. Section III shows
numerical experiment which employs the presented methods.
Section IV concludes the paper.
II. M ETHODOLOGY
A. Dictionary-based signal reconstruction
In this paper the authors use a dictionary based signal
reconstruction method. A central point of this method is a
dictionary Ψ ∈ RN ×2K . A representation vector v ∈ R2K
represents a signal x ∈ RN in the dictionary: x = Ψv.
An acquisition process, represented by an observation matrix
Φ ∈ RM ×N , senses the signal: y = Φx, where y ∈ RM
is the observed signal. Dictionary Ψ used in this paper is a
Digital Hartley Transform (DHT) matrix [9]. It consists of
2K columns indexed k ∈ {1, ..., 2K}. Frequencies reflected
by the columns of the dictionary are, for the first K columns:
k
flow = (−K +k−1)δf , k ∈ {1, ..., K}, for the last K columns:
k
fhigh = (−K + k)δf , k ∈ {K + 1, ..., 2K}, where δf is the
frequency separation between the columns.
A signal reconstruction process (R) attempts to reconstruct
the sensed signal. In this paper the reconstruction is divided
into two steps. The first step (R1 ) generates the reconstructed
representation vector v̂, the second step (R2 ) finally generates
the reconstructed signal x̂:
R: R1 (y, Ψ, Φ)  v̂ R2 (v̂, Ψ)  x̂ (1)
The second step R2 is trivial: x̂ = Ψv̂, but the first step
optimization is widely used:
R1 : v̂ = arg min ΦΨv̂ − y22 + λv̂1 (2)
(note: another reconstruction methods exists [1], [2]). The
theory of Compressed Sensing enables sub-Nyquist sampling,
which is possible only if the signal x is represented by a sparse
v. In [4] the authors give a relationship between required signal
sparsity (T ), size of the observation vector y (M ) and the
number of columns in Ψ (2K):
C = T M −1 log 2K (3)
where C is some constant. According to the above the shorter
y is and the wider Ψ is, the more sparse v must be to ensure
the same probability of correct reconstruction.
 IEEE SECON 2015 Posters: Twelfth Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON)

B. Selective dictionary-based signal reconstruction |A|

Wanted signal Unwanted
Any signal which is present in the sampled signal x but interference
cannot be represented by the dictionary Ψ compromises the
quality of the signal reconstruction. The stronger such a signal f
is, the worse is the reconstruction quality. An adjacent-channel Uncertainty
interference is an example of such a parasitic signal, which in
High Uncertainty
many applications may be of similar or higher power than
the sampled signal x [6], [7]. It is possible to use a wider certainty
dictionary Ψ, which contains more columns and spans a
wider frequency range, and hence includes a spectrum where –f
x
–f
b
+ fb + fx Limited
adjacent-channel interference may be present. But according reconstructed
†
to (3), increased size of the dictionary (2K) requires a more Reconstructed |A| vector ( v )
sparse signal or longer observation vector, the latter of which
vector ( v )
in practice requires higher sampling frequency.
A solution to this problem is a selective dictionary-based f
–f –f + fb + fx
signal reconstruction (Fig. 2), which the authors firstly pro- x b
posed in [6]. Let us denote the spectrum where the wanted Correctly reconstructed Incorrectly reconstructed
signal is expected to be as B and an adjacent spectrum where
the adjacent-channel interference is expected to be found Fig. 2: The idea of selective signal reconstruction
as X . In the first part (R1 ) of the reconstruction, selective
dictionary-based reconstruction uses a wide-frequency dictio-
nary Ψ which spans spectra B and X . The second part (R2 )
of the reconstruction uses a limited dictionary Ψ† and limited subset of p columns for orthogonality, but instead check pairs
reconstructed vector v̂† . The limited dictionary Ψ† contains of the columns. Furthermore, it is not checked how ‘similar to
only columns which reflect the spectrum B; similarly the orthogonality’ the pairs of columns are, but instead the authors
limited reconstructed vector v̂† contains only entries which look for columns which are fully orthogonal to the rest.
corresponds to these columns. Indices kB† ∈ K†B of the Lemma 2.1: If a given column ψk is orthogonal to every
columns of the dictionary Ψ which correspond to spectrum other column in the matrix Θ, then a corresponding k-th entry
B are within the interval: of the vector v̂ will be reconstructed correctly by R1 .
K†B = {K − α + 1, ..., K + α} α = fb /δf  (4) In selective dictionary-based signal reconstruction only these
entries of v̂ which correspond to the spectrum B should be
Using the wider dictionary in R1 , the parasitic signal is reconstructed correctly. Therefore, according to lemma 2.1,
included into reconstruction, so the reconstruction quality is the columns of Θ which corresponds to these entries should
not compromised by a not-included parasitic signal. On the be orthogonal to all other columns of Θ. Using a modified
other hand, in R2 only a part of the reconstructed vector RIP equation it is possible to check if two columns of Θ are
v̂ is used (green entries in Fig. 2), and only this part must orthogonal to each other:
be reconstructed correctly. This is different from a canonical
i
compressed sensing problem, which should reconstruct all (1 − δk,n )ai 22 ≤ Θk,n ai 22 ≤ (1 + δk,n
i
)ai 22 (5)
the coefficients in the vector v̂ correctly. Therefore, selective
where Θk,n is a matrix composed of two tested columns of the
dictionary-based signal reconstruction softens requirements for i
Θ matrix (k-th and n-th), δk,n is an orthogonality parameter
the reconstruction, because uncertainty in reconstruction of the
unwanted spectrum X is allowed. for the tested columns and for a random vector ai . Columns
k and n are orthogonal to each other if δk,n = 0, where δk,n :

C. RIP-based sampling analysis for selective reconstruction i
δk,n = δk,n (6)
The problem arises: is there a method which allows to i∈A
estimate if a given acquisition process represented by Φ favors where A is a set of random vectors. Ideally, cardinality of
correct reconstruction of spectrum B in the reconstruction the set |A| → inf, however it was experimentally found that
R1 ? In [3] the authors introduce Restricted Isometry Property |A| > 104 is sufficient. Let us introduce δk and δB parameters:
(RIP). The concept of RIP enables estimation of correct re-  
construction probability for a given acquisition process Φ and δk = δk,n δB = δk (7)
dictionary Ψ. The restricted isometry constant δp quantifies n∈J\k k∈K†B
how close to orthogonal the columns of the matrix Θ = ΦΨ
are, if any p columns of the matrix are taken into consideration. where J is a set of all the columns of Θ and K†B is a set
If these columns are non-orthogonal, then it is possible that of all the columns of Θ which correspond to the spectrum B
the process R1 will not recognize the reconstructed frequency as in (4). If δk = 0 then the k-th column of Θ is orthogonal
correctly. The closer to being orthogonal to the remaining to all other columns. If δB = 0 then all columns of Θ which
columns a given columns is, the higher is the probability that corresponds to spectrum X are orthogonal to each other and
a corresponding entry in v̂ will be reconstructed correctly. to all other columns. Using the above analysis it is possible to
Unfortunately, it is difficult to use RIP in practice due to its estimate if a given acquisition process Φ paired with a given
combinatorial nature. In this paper the authors do not check a dictionary Ψ allows for correct reconstruction of spectrum B.

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 IEEE SECON 2015 Posters: Twelfth Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON)

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
40
1.0
35

Sampling period
Index of column (n)
9.50 us 9.50 us

30
8.50 us 8.50 us
25 45 kHz 45 kHz
20
k 7.50 us 7.50 us

15 6.50 us 6.50 us

10
5.50 us 5.50 us
55 kHz
5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0.0
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 The number of interfering signals
Index of column (k) Index of column (k)
Fig. 4: Results of the numerical experiment: reconstruction
Fig. 3: Left: parameters δk,n (6) computed for pairs of columns success ratio of the wanted signal computed for uniform
of the dictionary Ψ used in the experiment. Right: parameters sampling (left) and uniform sampling with 20 % of the samples
δk (7) computed for columns of the dictionary Ψ lost (right)

III. N UMERICAL EXPERIMENT IV. C ONCLUSIONS

This section presents a numerical experiment which em-
ploys the analysis proposed in Sec. II. The experiment uses
DHT [9] signal dictionary Ψ, with frequency separation be-
tween columns γ = 5kHz. The dictionary is composed of
40 columns which represent the spectrum −100kHz ≤ f ≤
100kHz. For this dictionary the parameters δk,n (6) and δk
(7) were computed for sub-Nyquist uniform sampling schemes
with sampling periods τ = {5.25, 5.5, . . . , 10.0} μs.
Interesting results were found for uniform sampling period
τ  = 6.25 μs (Fig. 3), which corresponds to an oversampling
ratio (OSR) of 0.8. For this sampling period the columns
of the used dictionary Ψ corresponding to frequencies 0 <
f ≤ 55kHz are orthogonal to each other and to all other
columns. Fig. 4 shows results of a wanted signal reconstruction
experiment for the separation between the wanted signal and
the interfering signal set to fb = 55 kHz. The plot on the
left shows the ratio of successful signal reconstruction of the
wanted signal for uniform sampling with different sampling
periods and different numbers of interference signals in the
spectrum X (signal sparsity). The wanted signal occupies the
whole spectrum B. Clearly, the found sampling period τ 
(black arrow) guarantees perfect wanted signal reconstruction
even if the signal is non–sparse. The requirement of signal
sparsity is replaced with a limited requirement of correct signal
reconstruction, which applies only to the wanted frequencies.
Because the signal does not have to be sparse, λ = 0 can be set
in the optimization routine (2) - hence, the optimization is an
2 optimization, which is less complicated to implement than
1 . Plot on the right of Fig. 4 shows results of the wanted signal
reconstruction if random 20 % of samples from the original
uniform sampling pattern are lost. This might be a case if
ADC has insufficient dynamic range – some of the samples are
saturated and therefore useless in the reconstruction process.
The wanted signal occupies around half of the spectrum B. It
can be seen that if some samples are lost, then the signal must
be sparse to ensure reconstruction – if interference occupies
a large portion of the spectrum X the reconstruction is not
possible. Because the reconstruction uses signal sparsity the
optimization (2) becomes an 1 optimization (λ > 0). For
any other tested parameters of DFT dictionary, it was always
possible to find a sub-Nyquist uniform sampling pattern which
favors certain low frequencies.
In this paper the authors proposed an analysis of signal
acquisition which allows for selective signal reconstruction
after sub-Nyquist sampling. Surprisingly, the reconstruction
works with standard uniform sampling, and, by applying
compressed sensing, if a fraction of the uniform samples is
lost. Hence, it opens a new possibilities of application of new
sampling methods using standard analog-to-digital converters.
The results are promising, this topic requires further research
on noise folding, sampling quantization effects and signal
reconstruction methods dedicated to the problem of frequency
selective signal reconstruction.
V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The work is supported by The Danish Council for Inde-
pendent Research under grant number 0602–02565B.
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