Sampling-50 years after Shannon

Abstract

This paper presents an account of the current state of sampling, 50 years after Shannon's formulation of the sampling theorem. The emphasis is on regular sampling, where the grid is uniform. This topic has benefitted from a strong research revival during the past few years, thanks in part to the mathematical connections that were made with wavelet theory. To introduce the reader to the modern, Hilbert-space formulation, we reinterpret Shannon's sampling procedure as an orthogonal projection onto the subspace of band-limited functions. We then extend the standard sampling paradigm for a presentation of functions in the more general class of "shift-in-variant" function spaces, including splines and wavelets. Practically, this allows for simpler-and possibly more realistic-interpolation models, which can be used in conjunction with a much wider class of (anti-aliasing) prefilters that are not necessarily ideal low-pass. We summarize and discuss the results available for the determination of the approximation error and of the sampling rate when the input of the system is essentially arbitrary; e.g., nonbandlimited. We also review variations of sampling that can be understood from the same unifying perspective. These include wavelets, multiwavelets, Papoulis generalized sampling, finite elements, and frames. Irregular sampling and radial basis functions are briefly mentioned.