Phase retrieval with random Gaussian sensing vectors by alternating projections

Abstract

We consider a phase retrieval problem, where we want to reconstruct a $n$-dimensional vector from its phaseless scalar products with $m$ sensing vectors. We assume the sensing vectors to be independently sampled from complex normal distributions. We propose to solve this problem with the classical non-convex method of alternating projections. We show that, when $m\geq Cn$ for $C$ large enough, alternating projections succeed with high probability, provided that they are carefully initialized. We also show that there is a regime in which the stagnation points of the alternating projections method disappear, and the initialization procedure becomes useless. However, in this regime, $m$ has to be of the order of $n^2$. Finally, we conjecture from our numerical experiments that, in the regime $m=O(n)$, there are stagnation points, but the size of their attraction basin is small if $m/n$ is large enough, so alternating projections can succeed with probability close to $1$ even with no special initialization.