Discretization, sampling, and the Fourier ratio

Abstract

We derive fundamental sampling bounds for smooth signals in continuous settings without sparsity assumptions. By introducing the Fourier ratio as a measure of spectral compressibility induced by smoothness, we obtain explicit, deterministic bounds linking signal regularity to recoverability from incomplete random samples. For functions in $C^2([0,1{]}^2)$ sampled on an $N$ by $N$ grid, we show that a random subset of spatial samples of size $$ C\frac{r_{N}^{2}}{\eps^{2}}\log(r_{N}/\eps)^{2}\log(N^{2}) $$ suffices, with high probability, to recover the entire discretized signal via ${\ell }^1$ minimization with relative $L^2$ error $O(\eps)$. We develop a parallel theory for bandlimited functions on the unit sphere, obtaining analogous recovery guarantees with sample complexity scaling polylogarithmically in the bandwidth. Our results establish smoothness as a deterministic prior that enforces compressibility in the Fourier domain, bridging continuous harmonic analysis with discrete compressed sensing in a unified information-theoretic framework.