Blind source separation (BSS) methods are useful tools to recover or enhance individual speech sources from their mixtures in a multi-talker environment. A class of efficient BSS methods are based on the mutual exclusion hypothesis of the source signal Fourier spectra on the timefrequency (TF) domain, and subsequent data clustering and classification. Though such methodology is simple, the discontinuous decisions in the TF domain for classification often cause defects in the recovered signals in the time domain. The defects are perceived as unpleasant ringing sounds, the so called musical noise. Post-processing is desired for further quality enhancement. In this paper, an efficient musical noise reduction method is presented based on a convex model of time-domain sparse filters. The sparse filters are intended to cancel out the interference due to major sparse peaks in the mixing coefficients or physically the early arrival and high energy portion of the room impulse responses. This strategy is efficiently carried out by l1 regularization and the split Bregman method. Evaluations by both synthetic and room recorded speech and music data show that our method outperforms existing musical noise reduction methods in terms of objective and subjective measures. Our method can be used as a post-processing tool for more general and recent versions of TF domain BSS methods as well.

In this paper, we develop an effective and robust adaptive time-frequency analysis method for signals with intra-wave frequency modulation. To handle this kind of signals effectively, we generalize our data-driven time-frequency analysis by using a shape function to describe the intra-wave frequency modulation. The idea of using a shape function in time-frequency analysis was first proposed by Wu (Wu 2013 Appl. Comput. Harmon. Anal. 35, 181–199. (doi:10.1016/j.acha.2012.08.008)). A shape function could be any smooth 2π-periodic function. Based on this model, we propose to solve an optimization problem to extract the shape function. By exploring the fact that the shape function is a periodic function with respect to its phase function, we can identify certain low-rank structure of the signal. This low-rank structure enables us to extract the shape function from the signal. Once the shape function is obtained, the instantaneous frequency with intra-wave modulation can be recovered from the shape function. We demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of our method by applying it to several synthetic and real signals. One important observation is that this approach is very stable to noise perturbation. By using the shape function approach, we can capture the intrawave frequency modulation very well even for noisepolluted signals. In comparison, existing methods such as empirical mode decomposition/ensemble empiricalmode decomposition seem to have difficulty in capturing the intra-wave modulation when the signal is polluted by noise.

For the steady-state solution of a differential equation from a one-dimensional multistate model in transport theory, we shall derive and study a nonsymmetric algebraic Riccati equation <i>B</i> <i>XF</i> <i>F</i>⁺<i>X</i> + <i>XB</i>⁺<i>X</i> = 0, where <i>F</i> (<i>I</i> <i>F</i>)<i>D</i> and <i>B</i> <i>BD</i> with positive diagonal matrices <i>D</i> and possibly low-ranked matrices <i>F</i> and <i>B</i>. We prove the existence of the minimal positive solution <i>X</i>^* under a set of physically reasonable assumptions and study its numerical computation by fixed-point iteration, Newtons method and the doubling algorithm. We shall also study several special cases. For example when <i>B</i> and <i>F</i> are low ranked then X*=(i=14UiViT) with low-ranked <i>U_i</i> and <i>V_i</i> that can be computed using more efficient iterative processes. Numerical examples will be given to illustrate our theoretical results.

In this work, we present an upscaled model for mixed dimensional coupled flow problem in fractured porous media. We consider both embedded and discrete fracture models (EFM and DFM) as fine scale models which contain coupled system of equations. For fine grid discretization, we use a conservative finite-volume approximation. We construct an upscaled model using the non-local multicontinuum (NLMC) method for the coupled system. The proposed upscaled model is based on a set of simplified multiscale basis functions for the auxiliary space and a constraint energy minimization principle for the construction of multiscale basis functions. Using the constructed NLMC-multiscale basis functions, we obtain an accurate coarse grid upscaled model. We present numerical results for both fine-grid models and upscaled coarse-grid models using our NLMC method. We consider model problems with (1) discrete fracture fine grid model with low and high permeable fractures;(2) embedded fine grid model for two types of geometries with differnet fracture networks and (3) embedded fracture fine grid model with heterogeneous permeability. The simulations using the upscaled model provide very accurate solutions with significant reduction in the dimension of the problem.

In this paper, we analyze the uniqueness of the sparse time frequency decomposition and investigate the eciency of the nonlinear matching pursuit method. Under the assumption of scale separation, we show that the sparse time frequency decomposition is unique up to an error that is determined by the scale separation property of the signal. We further show that the unique decomposition can be obtained approximately by the sparse time frequency decomposition using nonlinear matching pursuit.