Super-resolution on the Sphere using Convex Optimization

Abstract: This paper considers the problem of recovering an ensemble of Diracs on a sphere from its low resolution measurements. The Diracs can be located at any location on the sphere, not necessarily on a grid. We show that under a separation condition, one can recover the ensemble with high precision by a three-stage algorithm, which consists of solving a semi-definite program, root finding and least-square fitting. The algorithm's computation time depends solely on the number of measurements, and not on the required solution accuracy. We also show that in the special case of non-negative ensembles, a sparsity condition is sufficient for recovery. Furthermore, in the discrete setting, we estimate the recovery error in the presence of noise as a function of the noise level and the super-resolution factor.