Which sections to cover for my graduation thesis on BSS?

Question

I'm not sure if I'm on right place to ask a simple suggestion, so please be kind and don't downvote my question. I'm not asking someone to do it for me, I just need short guidance how should I proceed.

Currently, I'm writing a study of Blind source separation using eigenvalue decomposition. Since I'm not good at writing, I have done so far the needed programming part in Matlab. The study must be composed of ~50 pages theory about the problem. Theory should be in terms of explaining the BSS, BSS methods, ICA, and EVD which is the main topic. Can you suggest what to include in my writing since BSS has a lot of methods and it is difficult for me to decide and follow what to write and what not write. Can someone outline the order of things I should write and mention in my study?

I'm stuck at what should I write next, so far I have:

• Introduction to BSS
• Definition of Independence of signals
• Independence and correlation

• PCA and other prewhitening methods:

  1. centering
  2. whitening

I'm using books like: Independent Component Analysis - A Tutorial Introduction by James V. Stone; and Handbook of Blind Source Separation Independent Component Analysis and Applications 2010 by Pierre Comon, Christian Jutten.

Thank you,

Answer 1

Consider the following:

• Introduction to BSS
• Definition of Independence of signals
• Independence and correlation
• Methods of BSS
  • PCA and other prewhitening methods
    1. centering
    2. whitening
  • ICA based methods for BSS
  • SVD as a method for BSS
  • Information maximization approach
  • Matrix Factorization
  • Other Methods

The above is not based on any expertise on the subject. However, the general suggestion is to separate the methods section into two components: give individual sub-heading (level 2) weightage to methods that are important and frequently used for BSS (for example, ICA, and PCA). Once you are done covering the major techniques, include a sub-heading (level 2) like "Other Methods" wherein you can cover (briefly, based on the number of pages and the importance of each of these sub-sub-headings) topics like Dependent Component Analysis, and so on (level 3).

Consider looking at this and this which have a ranking of algorithms used for BSS according to the number of citations received. This should help you in separating important and newer algorithms (to be taken under level 2) vs. the older and obsolete ones (level 3; under the Other Methods section).

I hope this helps (though I guess it is a little too late).