Phase transition in compressed sensing using log-sum penalty and adaptive smoothing

Abstract

In many real-world problems, recovering sparse signals from underdetermined linear systems remains a fundamental challenge. Although $\ell_1$ norm minimization is widely used, it suffers from estimation bias that prevents it from reaching the Bayes-optimal reconstruction limit. Nonconvex alternatives, such as the log-sum penalty, have been proposed to promote stronger sparsity. However, maintaining their algorithmic stability is challenging. To address this challenge, we introduce an adaptive smoothing strategy within an approximate message passing framework to mitigate algorithmic instability. Furthermore, we evaluate the typical exact-recovery threshold for Gaussian measurement matrices using the replica method and state evolution. The results indicate that the adaptive method achieves exact recovery over a broader region than $\ell_1$ norm minimization, although metastable states hinder reaching the information-theoretic limit.