  We study the feasibility of short finite impulse response (FIR) synthesis for
perfect reconstruction (PR) in generic FIR filter banks. Among all PR synthesis
banks, we focus on the one with the minimum filter length. For filter banks
with oversampling factors of at least two, we provide prescriptions for the
shortest filter length of the synthesis bank that would guarantee PR almost
surely. The prescribed length is as short or shorter than the analysis filters
and has an approximate inverse relationship with the oversampling factor. Our
results are in form of necessary and sufficient statements that hold
generically, hence only fail for elaborately-designed nongeneric examples. We
provide extensive numerical verification of the theoretical results and
demonstrate that the gap between the derived filter length prescriptions and
the true minimum is small. The results have potential applications in synthesis
FB design problems, where the analysis bank is given, and for analysis of
fundamental limitations in blind signals reconstruction from data collected by
unknown subsampled multi-channel systems.
