Complex Extension of Infinite Sparse Factor Analysis for Blind Speech Separation

The most standard blind source separation (BSS) methods address the situation when a set of signals are available, e.g. from measurements, and all of them are linear memoryless combinations, with unknown coefficient values, of the same limited set of unknown source signals. BSS methods aim at estimating these unknown source signals and/or coefficients. This generic problem is e.g. faced in the field of Earth observation (where it is also called “unsupervised unmixing”), when considering the commonly used (over)simplified model of hyperspectral images. Each pixel of such an image has an associated reflectance spectrum derived from measurements, which is defined by the fraction of sunlight power reflected by the corresponding Earth surface at each wavelength. Each source signal is then the single reflectance spectrum associated with one of the classes of pure materials which are present in the region of Earth corresponding to the overall considered hyperspectral image. Besides, the associated coefficients define the surfaces on Earth covered with each of these pure materials in each sub-region corresponding to one pixel of the considered image. However, real hyperspectral data e.g. obtained in urban areas have a much more complex structure than the above basic model: each class of pure materials (e.g. roof tiles, trees or asphalt) has so-called spectral or intra-class variability, i.e. it yields a somewhat different spectral component in each pixel of the image. In this complex framework, this chapter shows that Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and its proposed extension are of high interest at three stages of our investigation. First, PCA allows us to analyze the above-mentioned spectral variability of real high-dimensional hyperspectral data and to propose an extended data model which is suited to these complex data. We then develop a versatile extension of BSS methods based on Nonnegative Matrix Factorization, which adds the capability to handle arbitrary forms of intra-class variability by transposing PCA concepts to this original version of the BSS tramework. Finally, PCA again proves to be very well suited to analyzing the high-dimensional data obtained as the result of the proposed BSS method.

Blind source separation and feature extraction in concurrent control charts pattern recognition: Novel analyses and a comparison of different methods

Upgrading Sparse NMF algorithm for blind source separation through Adaptive Parameterized Hybrid Kernel based approach

This paper presents a convex geometry (CG)-based method for blind separation of nonnegative sources. First, the unaccessible source matrix is normalized to be column-sum-to-one by mapping the available observation matrix. Then, its zero-samples are found by searching the facets of the convex hull spanned by the mapped observations. Considering these zero-samples, a quadratic cost function with respect to each row of the unmixing matrix, together with a linear constraint in relation to the involved variables, is proposed. Upon which, an algorithm is presented to estimate the unmixing matrix by solving a classical convex optimization problem. Unlike the traditional blind source separation (BSS) methods, the CG-based method does not require the independence assumption, nor the uncorrelation assumption. Compared with the BSS methods that are specifically designed to distinguish between nonnegative sources, the proposed method requires a weaker sparsity condition. Provided simulation results illustrate the performance of our method.

Spiny Lobster Sound Identification Based on Blind Source Separation (BSS) for Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM)

Blind source separation has found applications in various areas including biomedical signal processing and genomic signal processing. Often, blind source separation is solved via independent component analysis (ICA) by assuming and utilizing mutual independence among source signals. However, in bio-signal and genomic signal processing, the assumption of independence is often untrue, and the performance of the ICA approach is not as good. Much effort has been devoted to searching alternative approaches to blind source separation without the independence assumption. One idea known as network component analysis (NCA) is developed to identify the underlying regulatory signals of transcription factors in the gene regulatory network. In this paper we show that NCA is a general method for blind source separation using a priori information on the mixing matrix. An alternative proof of identifiability using NCA is proposed and a novel method to solve the problem is developed. Validation is made through computer simulations.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are a superposition of electric potential differences generated by neurophysiological activity associated with psychophysical events. Spatiotemporal dissociation of these signal sources can supplement conventional ERP analysis and improve source localization. However, results from established source separation methods applied to ERPs can be challenging to interpret. Hence, we have developed a recurrent neural network (RNN) method for blind source separation. The RNN transforms input step pulse signals representing events into corresponding ERP difference waveforms. Source waveforms are obtained from penultimate layer units and scalp maps are obtained from feed-forward output layer weights that project these source waveforms onto EEG electrode amplitudes. An interpretable, sparse source representation is achieved by incorporating L1 regularization of signals obtained from the penultimate layer of the network during training. This RNN method was applied to four ERP difference waveforms (MMN, N170, N400, P3) from the open-access ERP CORE database, and independent component analysis (ICA) was applied to the same data for comparison. The RNN decomposed these ERPs into eleven spatially and temporally separate sources that were less noisy, tended to be more ERP-specific, and were less similar to each other than ICA-derived sources. The RNN sources also had less ambiguity between source waveform amplitude, scalp potential polarity, and equivalent current dipole orientation than ICA sources. In conclusion, the proposed RNN blind source separation method can be effectively applied to grand-average ERP difference waves and holds promise for further development as a computational model of event-related neural signals.

A novel semi-blind source separation framework towards maximum signal-to-interference ratio

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) may be attacked by multifarious kinds of the active-jamming, which will lead to the ineffectiveness of SAR in complex electromagnetic environment. In this paper, a novel multi-electromagnetic jamming counter-measure for the airborne SAR is proposed based on maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) blind source separation. Firstly, the imaging geometry and multi-component mixed signal model of airborne SAR are established. Then, based on multi-component mixed signal matrix, a blind source separation (BSS) method based on the maximum SNR is proposed to separate the real target echo signal from the multi-electromagnetic jamming signals. After real target echo signal identification, the high resolution images of the interested target area can be achieved by the corresponding SAR imaging method. The simulated and measured data results are present to prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Drive system is one of most important key equipment to guarantee safe and stable operation in locomotive. With time variation, unpredictability and nonstationary, fault source of drive system is not obtained by traditional fault diagnosis method. Blind source separation is a kind of method on source signals separation under transmission channel unknown instance. The method of Blind source separation based on variable metric empirical mode decomposition is proposed. Intrinsic mode function is built, redundancy factors are reduced, and recurrent neural network is used to adaptive blind separation. The method is verified by data analysis of on-line measuring. The results show that separation efficiency is improved and unaffected with iteration time in the process of fault information separation, which will be better for further fundamental research and provide technique support for the locomotive.

Recently, blind source separation (BSS) methods have gained significant attention in the area of signal processing. Independent component analysis (ICA) and second-order blind identification (SOBI) are two popular BSS methods that have been applied to modal identification of mechanical and structural systems. Published results by several researchers have shown that ICA performs satisfactorily for systems with very low levels of structural damping, for example, for damping ratios of the order of 1% critical. For practical structural applications with higher levels of damping, methods based on SOBI have shown significant improvement over ICA methods. However, traditional SOBI methods suffer when nonstationary sources are present, such as those that occur during earthquakes and other transient excitations. In this paper, a new technique based on SOBI, called the modified cross-correlation method, is proposed to address these shortcomings. The conditions in which the problem of structural system identification can be posed as a BSS problem is also discussed. The results of simulation described in terms of identified natural frequencies, mode shapes, and damping ratios are presented for the cases of synthetic wind and recorded earthquake excitations. The results of identification show that the proposed method achieves better performance over traditional ICA and SOBI methods. Both experimental and large-scale structural simulation results are included to demonstrate the applicability of the newly proposed method to structural identification problems.

During the operation of rotating machinery, the vibration signals measured by sensors are the aliasing signals of various vibration sources, and they contain strong noises. Conventional signal processing methods have difficulty separating the aliasing signals, which causes great difficulties in the condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of the equipment. The principle and method of blind source separation are introduced, and it is pointed out that the blind source separation algorithm is invalid in strong pulse noise environments. In these environments, the vibration signals are first de-noised with the median filter (MF) method and the de-noised signals are separated with an improved joint approximate diagonalization of eigenmatrices (JADE) algorithm. The simulation results found here verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Finally, the vibration signal of the hybrid rotor is effectively separated by the proposed method. A new separation approach is thus provided for vibration signals in strong pulse noise environments.

To effectively separate underdetermined convolutive mixtures, an accurate and robust underdetermined convolutive blind source separation (BSS) method in the time–frequency domain based on single source points (SSPs) is proposed. Firstly, convolutive BSS in the time domain is transformed into instantaneous BSS in the time–frequency domain by short-time Fourier transform (STFT). Secondly, hierarchical clustering is carried out after the extraction and identification of SSPs by using sparse coding technology. Thirdly, source separation in the frequency domain is obtained based on Lp norm minimization and then alignments are permutated and scales are compensated. Finally, inverse STFT is adopted to reconstruct the separated signals in the time domain. Furthermore, numerical case studies and experimental case studies on a cylindrical test bed are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Generally, this paper provides an accurate and robust underdetermined convolutive BSS technique for mixing matrix estimation, source identification and contribution evaluation, which can provide significant evidence for vibration and noise monitoring and control.

Over the past decades, many studies have been published on the extraction of non-invasive foetal electrocardiogram (NI-FECG) from abdominal recordings. Most of these contributions claim to obtain excellent results in detecting foetal QRS (FQRS) complexes in terms of location. A small subset of authors have investigated the extraction of morphological features from the NI-FECG. However, due to the shortage of available public databases, the large variety of performance measures employed and the lack of open-source reference algorithms, most contributions cannot be meaningfully assessed.This article attempts to address these issues by presenting a standardised methodology for stress testing NI-FECG algorithms, including absolute data, as well as extraction and evaluation routines. To that end, a large database of realistic artificial signals was created, totaling 145.8 h of multichannel data and over one million FQRS complexes. An important characteristic of this dataset is the inclusion of several non-stationary events (e.g. foetal movements, uterine contractions and heart rate fluctuations) that are critical for evaluating extraction routines. To demonstrate our testing methodology, three classes of NI-FECG extraction algorithms were evaluated: blind source separation (BSS), template subtraction (TS) and adaptive methods (AM). Experiments were conducted to benchmark the performance of eight NI-FECG extraction algorithms on the artificial database focusing on: FQRS detection and morphological analysis (foetal QT and T/QRS ratio).The overall median FQRS detection accuracies (i.e. considering all non-stationary events) for the best performing methods in each group were 99.9% for BSS, 97.9% for AM and 96.0% for TS. Both FQRS detections and morphological parameters were shown to heavily depend on the extraction techniques and signal-to-noise ratio. Particularly, it is shown that their evaluation in the source domain, obtained after using a BSS technique, should be avoided. Data, extraction algorithms and evaluation routines were released as part of the fecgsyn toolbox on Physionet under an GNU GPL open-source license. This contribution provides a standard framework for benchmarking and regulatory testing of NI-FECG extraction algorithms.

Conventionally, there is a method to use auscultation when medical doctors diagnose a disease from heartbeats with heart noise. However, the respiratory sound and the heart sound are mixed. Further, it is difficult for the desired heart sound to be heard. For solving this problem, we propose a method to separate respiratory sound and heart sound based on blind source separation (BSS). In BSS method, we use a non-linear function corresponding to the probability distribution of source signals in order to separate. A distribution of the respiratory sound is a high-order sub-Gaussian distribution close to uniform distribution, a distribution of the heart sound is a super Gaussian distribution. In the conventional method, there is no non-linear function corresponding to both distribution. Therefore, in this paper, in order to separate the respiratory sound and the heart sound, we propose new non-linear function accurately separated from super Gaussian distribution through sub-Gaussian distribution to uniform distribution. Then, we build the BSS method based on the proposed non-linear function. We evaluate the proposed method by computer simulation.