|  | 
                    Xampling Pulse Streams, Multichannel Multichannel Sampling of Pulse 
                    Streams at the Rate of InnovationKfir Gedalyahu and Yonina C. Eldar
 Introduction We address 
                    the problem of sampling signals which 
                    are comprised of pulse streams. This model 
                    is prevalent in applications such as 
                    bio-imaging, neuronal activity and 
                    ultra-wideband communication. Pulse 
                    streams can viewed as parametric signals, which 
                    are defined by the pulses delays and 
                    amplitudes. Following this point of view, it was 
                    suggested that the minimal sampling rate for 
                    such a model, is the number of degrees of 
                    freedom per unit of time, referred to as the rate 
                    of innovation. Although sub-Nyquist schemes 
                    for pulse streams were proposed in various 
                    works, either the rate of innovation was not 
                    achieved, or the pulse shape was limited to 
                    Diracs. In addition, several of the methods are 
                    unstable in the presence of noise.
                    In this work we present a new sub-Nyquist 
                    architecture, which operate at the minimal sampling 
                    rate, support general pulse shapes and exhibit high 
                    noise robustness. 
 The model treated here is related to the one 
                    used in the multipath medium 
                    identification problem, however there are 
                    two fundamental differences between the models, 
                    which lead to different sampling strategies. The 
                    first is that in contrast to the previous 
                    setting, the unknown delays vary from period to 
                    period.
 Second, here we require that the pulses have  
                    finite time support, and that pulses from one 
                    period do not interfere with other periods. 
                    Under this assumption, which is not required in 
                    the previous model, each period of the signal 
                    can be processed separately.
 The advantages over the previous scheme is that it 
                    supports varying delays from period to period, and 
                    as we show next it requires a simpler digital 
                    correction stage. The advantages of the previous 
                    method are that it can treat pulses with infinite 
                    time support and that it includes also single 
                    channel configurations.
 
 Signal Model We consider a signal 
                    comprised of an infinite number of delayed and weighted pulses. 
                    It is assumed that in each time interval T there are L 
                    pulses. Since each pulse is defined by 2 parameters - delay 
                    and amplitude, in each interval there are 2L degrees of 
                    freedom. Therefore the rate of innovation of the signal is 2L/T. 
                    Our aim is to develop a sampling and reconstruction method 
                    operating at this rate. An example for stream of 
                    pulses with L=2 pulses per period is given below:
  
 
 X-ADC Scheme The sampling scheme is 
                    comprised of p parallel sampling channels. In each 
                    channel the input signal is modulated with a properly 
                    designed waveform, followed by an integrator. 
                    Various signals can be 
                    used as modulating waveforms. Two useful examples are: 
                    Filtered 
                      rectangular pulses modulated by ±1. 
                      These waveform can be generated by the Modulated 
                      Wideband Converter.Cosine and Sine 
                      functions with multiples of a basic frequency of 1/T 
                      (tones). An example for a scheme based 
                    on rectangular pulses as modulating waveforms:  
 Subspace Detection and Recovery Method It was shown in [1] that each 
                    sample at the output of the multichannel scheme, is 
                    composed of a linear combination of the signal's Fourier 
                    coefficients. By proper design of the modulating 
                    waveforms, a set of 2L Fourier coefficients can be 
                    extracted from the samples. Once the Fourier 
                    coefficients are given the 
                    unknown delays can be recovered using standard 
                    methods for model-based complex sinusoids estimation, 
                    such as the annihilating filter, matrix pencil  
                    and more. See [1] for further details.
                    In order to perfectly recover the 
                    delays and amplitudes, the number of sampling channels 
                    has to be greater or equal to 2L, leading to a minimal 
                    sampling rate of 2L/T. This rate equals to the signal's 
                    rate of innovation, which is the minimal rate for such 
                    models. Performance in the Presence of Noise We demonstrate the performance of our approach in 
                    the presence of white Gaussian noise when working at the 
                    rate of
                    innovation. We compare our results to those achieved by 
                    the integrators and exponential filters based 
                    methods.
                    The MSE as function of SNR for L=2 Diracs per period and 
                    sampling rate of 5/T is depicted below. The plot shows 
                    that the two configurations supported by our scheme 
                    (tones and rectangular pulses) outperform the previous methods.  
 
 Next, we compare our method to the E-spline and B-splines 
                    methods. These methods require a sampling rate of 
                    64/T, for L=4 pulses per period. The results are shown 
                    in the graph below. It can be shown that our approach is 
                    also more robust than the ones based on splines, in 
                    addition to its lower sampling rate requirement.   Reference Software Download Installation:1. Unzip all files to a directory of your choice.
 
 Usage:
 1. Use MultiSampMix.m to perform sampling 
                    of Diracs with the proposed method.
 2. Use MultiRecoverMix.m to perform recovery of the Diracs delays from the samples, 
                    where noise can be added to the samples prior to the recovery 
                    stage.
 3. For more information on the functions usage, see 
                    MultiFRI.docx.
 
 
 |  |