Sample Complexity of Total Variation Minimization

This letter considers the use of total variation (TV) minimization in the recovery of a given gradient sparse vector from Gaussian linear measurements. It has been shown in recent studies that there exists a sharp phase transition behavior in TV minimization for the number of measurements necessary to recover the signal in asymptotic regimes. The phase-transition curve specifies the boundary of success and failure of TV minimization for large number of measurements. It is a challenging task to obtain a theoretical bound that reflects this curve. In this letter, we present a novel upper bound that suitably approximates this curve and is asymptotically sharp. Numerical results show that our bound is closer to the empirical TV phase-transition curve than the previously known bound obtained by Kabanava.