Lossless digraph signal processing via polar decomposition

Abstract: In this paper, we present a signal processing framework for directed graphs. Unlike undirected graphs, a graph shift operator such as the adjacency matrix associated with a directed graph usually does not admit an orthogonal eigenbasis. This makes it challenging to define the Fourier transform. Our methodology leverages the polar decomposition to define two distinct eigendecompositions, each associated with different matrices derived from this decomposition. We propose to extend the frequency domain and introduce a Fourier transform that jointly encodes the spectral response of a signal for the two eigenbases from the polar decomposition. This allows us to define convolution following a standard routine. Our approach has two features: it is lossless as the shift operator can be fully recovered from factors of the polar decomposition. Moreover, it subsumes the traditional graph signal processing if the graph is directed. We present numerical results to show how the framework can be applied.