  The Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) is a fundamental property of a matrix
enabling sparse recovery. Informally, an m x n matrix satisfies RIP of order k
in the l_p norm if ||Ax||_p \approx ||x||_p for any vector x that is k-sparse,
i.e., that has at most k non-zeros. The minimal number of rows m necessary for
the property to hold has been extensively investigated, and tight bounds are
known. Motivated by signal processing models, a recent work of Baraniuk et al
has generalized this notion to the case where the support of x must belong to a
given model, i.e., a given family of supports. This more general notion is much
less understood, especially for norms other than l_2. In this paper we present
tight bounds for the model-based RIP property in the l_1 norm. Our bounds hold
for the two most frequently investigated models: tree-sparsity and
block-sparsity. We also show implications of our results to sparse recovery
problems.
