Srinivasa Ramanujan and signal-processing problems

Abstract

The Ramanujan sum c q ( n ) has been used by mathematicians to derive many important infinite series expansions for arithmetic-functions in number theory. Interestingly, this sum has many properties which are attractive from the point of view of digital signal processing. One of these is that c q ( n ) is periodic with period q , and another is that it is always integer-valued in spite of the presence of complex roots of unity in the definition. Engineers and physicists have in the past used the Ramanujan-sum to extract periodicity information from signals. In recent years, this idea has been developed further by introducing the concept of Ramanujan-subspaces. Based on this, Ramanujan dictionaries and filter banks have been developed, which are very useful to identify integer-valued periods in possibly complex-valued signals. This paper gives an overview of these developments from the view point of signal processing. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Srinivasa Ramanujan: in celebration of the centenary of his election as FRS’.