Projection approximation subspace tracking

Subspace estimation plays an important role in a variety of modern signal processing applications. We present a new approach for tracking the signal subspace recursively. It is based on a novel interpretation of the signal subspace as the solution of a projection like unconstrained minimization problem. We show that recursive least squares techniques can be applied to solve this problem by making an appropriate projection approximation. The resulting algorithms have a computational complexity of O(nr) where n is the input vector dimension and r is the number of desired eigencomponents. Simulation results demonstrate that the tracking capability of these algorithms is similar to and in some cases more robust than the computationally expensive batch eigenvalue decomposition. Relations of the new algorithms to other subspace tracking methods and numerical issues are also discussed