Srinivasa Ramanujan and signal-processing problems

The Ramanujan sum cq(n) has been used by mathematicians to derive many important infinite series expansions for arithmetic-functions in number theory. Interestingly, this sum has many properties which are attractive from the point of view of digital signal processing. One of these is that cq(n) is periodic with period q, and another is that it is always integer-valued in spite of the presence of complex roots of unity in the definition. Engineers and physicists have in the past used the Ramanujan-sum to extract periodicity information from signals. In recent years, this idea has been developed further by introducing the concept of Ramanujan-subspaces. Based on this, Ramanujan dictionaries and filter banks have been developed, which are very useful to identify integer-valued periods in possibly complex-valued signals. This paper gives an overview of these developments from the view point of signal processing. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Srinivasa Ramanujan: in celebration of the centenary of his election as FRS’.