Equivariant adaptive source separation

Source separation consists of recovering a set of independent signals when only mixtures with unknown coefficients are observed. This paper introduces a class of adaptive algorithms for source separation that implements an adaptive version of equivariant estimation and is henceforth called equivariant adaptive separation via independence (EASI). The EASI algorithms are based on the idea of serial updating. This specific form of matrix updates systematically yields algorithms with a simple structure for both real and complex mixtures. Most importantly, the performance of an EASI algorithm does not depend on the mixing matrix. In particular, convergence rates, stability conditions, and interference rejection levels depend only on the (normalized) distributions of the source signals. Closed-form expressions of these quantities are given via an asymptotic performance analysis. The theme of equivariance is stressed throughout the paper. The source separation problem has an underlying multiplicative structure. The parameter space forms a (matrix) multiplicative group. We explore the (favorable) consequences of this fact on implementation, performance, and optimization of EASI algorithms.