The Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT), in its sampled version (the Gabor transform), is a well known, valuable tool for displaying the energy distribution of a signal over the time-frequency plane. The equivalence between Gabor analysis and certain filter banks is a well-known fact. The main task is how to find a Gabor analysis-synthesis system with perfect (or depending on the application, satisfactorily accurate) reconstruction in a numerically efficient way. This is done by using the dual Gabor frame, which implies the need to invert the Gabor frame operator.
This project incorporates an application of the general idea of preconditioning in the context of Gabor frames. While most (iterative) algorithms aim at a relatively costly exact numeric calculation of the inverse Gabor frame matrix, we will use a "cheap method" to find an approximation. The inexpensive method will be based on (double) preconditioning using diagonal and circulant preconditioners. As a result, good approximations of the true dual Gabor atom can be obtained at low computational costs.
For a number of applications, such as time stretching without changing the frequency content in audio processing or more complex modifications like psychoacoustical masking, the time domain signal needs to be reconstructed using the time-frequency domain coefficients.
H. G. Feichtinger et al., NuHAG, Facultyof Mathematics, University of Vienna