Gabor Frames in Finite Dimensions

Abstract

Gabor frames have been extensively studied in time-frequency analysis over the last 30 years. They are commonly used in science and engineering to synthesize signals from, or to decompose signals into, building blocks which are localized in time and frequency. This chapter contains a basic and self-contained introduction to Gabor frames on finite-dimensional complex vector spaces. In this setting, we give elementary proofs of the central results on Gabor frames in the greatest possible generality; that is, we consider Gabor frames corresponding to lattices in arbitrary finite Abelian groups. In the second half of this chapter, we review recent results on the geometry of Gabor systems in finite dimensions: the linear independence of subsets of its members, their mutual coherence, and the restricted isometry property for such systems. We apply these results to the recovery of sparse signals, and discuss open questions on the geometry of finite-dimensional Gabor systems.