We study reconstruction operators on a Hilbert space that are exact on a given reconstruction subspace. Among those the reconstruction operator obtained by the least squares fit has the smallest operator norm, and therefore is most stable with respect to noisy measurements. We then construct the operator with the smallest possible quasi-optimality constant, which is the most stable with respect to a systematic error appearing before the sampling process (model uncertainty). We describe how to vary continuously between the two reconstruction methods, so that we can trade stability for quasi-optimality. As an application we study the reconstruction of a compactly supported function from nonuniform samples of its Fourier transform.
In many Applications one seeks to recover an entire function of exponential type from its non-uniformly spaced samples. Whereas the mathematical theory usually addresses the question of when such a function in L 2 (R) can be recovered, numerical methods operate with a finite-dimensional model. The numerical reconstruction or approximation of the original function amounts to the solution of a large linear system. We show that the solutions of a particularly efficient discrete model in which the data are fit by trigonometric polynomials converge to the solution of the original infinite-dimensional reconstruction problem. This legitimatizes the numerical computations and explains why the algorithms employed produce reasonable results. The main mathematical result is a new type of approximation theorem for entire functions of exponential type from a finite number of values. From another point of view our approach provides a new method for proving sampling theorems.