  Convex optimization with sparsity-promoting convex regularization is a
standard approach for estimating sparse signals in noise. In order to promote
sparsity more strongly than convex regularization, it is also standard practice
to employ non-convex optimization. In this paper, we take a third approach. We
utilize a non-convex regularization term chosen such that the total cost
function (consisting of data consistency and regularization terms) is convex.
Therefore, sparsity is more strongly promoted than in the standard convex
formulation, but without sacrificing the attractive aspects of convex
optimization (unique minimum, robust algorithms, etc.). We use this idea to
improve the recently developed 'overlapping group shrinkage' (OGS) algorithm
for the denoising of group-sparse signals. The algorithm is applied to the
problem of speech enhancement with favorable results in terms of both SNR and
perceptual quality.
