
Optimization of Synthesis Oversampled Complex Filter Banks
An important issue with oversampled FIR analysis filter banks (FBs) is to determine inverse synthesis FBs, when they exist. Given any complex oversampled FIR analysis FB, we first provide an algorithm to determine whether there exists an inverse FIR synthesis system. We also provide a method to ensure the Hermitian symmetry property on the synthesis side, which is serviceable to processing real-valued signals. As an invertible analysis scheme corresponds to a redundant decomposition, there is no unique inverse FB. Given a particular solution, we parameterize the whole family of inverses through a null space projection. The resulting reduced parameter set simplifies design procedures, since the perfect reconstruction constrained optimization problem is recast as an unconstrained optimization problem. The design of optimized synthesis FBs based on time or frequency localization criteria is then investigated, using a simple yet efficient gradient algorithm.

Hybrid Floating Point Technique Yields 1.2 Gigasample Per Second 32 to 2048 point Floating Point FFT in a single FPGA
Hardware Digital Signal Processing, especially hardware targeted to FPGAs, has traditionally been done using fixed point arithmetic, mainly due to the high cost associated with implementing floating point arithmetic. That cost comes in the form of increased circuit complexity. The increase circuit complexity usually also degrades maximum clock performance. Certain applications demand the dynamic range offered by floating point hardware, and yet require the speeds and circuit density usually associated with fixed point hardware. The Fourier transform is one DSP building block that frequently requires floating point dynamic range. Textbook construction of a pipelined floating point FFT engine capable of continuous input entails dozens of floating point adders and multipliers. The complexity of those circuits quickly exceeds the resources available on a single FPGA. This paper describes a technique that is a hybrid of fixed point and floating point operations designed to significantly reduce the overhead for floating point. The results are illustrated with an FFT processor that performs 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 and 2048 point Fourier transforms with IEEE single precision floating point inputs and outputs. The design achieves sufficient density to realize a continuous complex data rate of 1.2 Gigasamples per second data throughput using a single Virtex4-SX55-10 device.

Efficient Digital Fiilters
What would you do in the following situation? Let ’ s say you are diagnosing a DSP system problem in the field. You have your trusty laptop with your development system and an emulator. You figure out that there was a problem with the system specifications and a symmetric FIR filter in the software won ’ t do the job; it needs reduced passband ripple, or maybe more stopband attenuation. You then realize you don ’ t have any filter design software on the laptop, and the customer is getting angry. The answer is easy: You can take the existing filter and sharpen it. Simply stated, filter sharpening is a technique for creating a new filter from an old one [1] – [3] . While the technique is almost 30 years old, it is not generally known by DSP engineers nor is it mentioned in most DSP textbooks.

An application of neural networks to adaptive playout delay in VoIP
The statistical nature of data traffic and the dynamic routing techniques employed in IP networks results in a varying network delay (jitter) experienced by the individual IP packets which form a VoIP flow. As a result voice packets generated at successive and periodic intervals at a source will typically be buffered at the receiver prior to playback in order to smooth out the jitter. However, the additional delay introduced by the playout buffer degrades the quality of service. Thus, the ability to forecast the jitter is an integral part of selecting an appropriate buffer size. This paper compares several neural network based models for adaptive playout buffer selection and in particular a novel combined wavelet transform/neural network approach is proposed. The effectiveness of these algorithms is evaluated using recorded VoIP traces by comparing the buffering delay and the packet loss ratios for each technique. In addition, an output speech signal is reconstructed based on the packet loss information for each algorithm and the perceptual quality of the speech is then estimated using the PESQ MOS algorithm. Simulation results indicate that proposed Haar-Wavelets-Packet MLP and Statistical-Model MLP adaptive scheduling schemes offer superior performance.

HIERARCHICAL MOTION ESTIMATION FOR EMBEDDED OBJECT TRACKING
This paper presents an algorithm developed to provide automatic motion detection and object tracking embedded within intelligent CCTV systems. The algorithm development focuses on techniques which provide an efficient embedded systems implementation with the ability to target both FPGA and DSP devices. During algorithm development constraints on hardware implementation have been fully considered resulting in an algorithm which, when targeted at current FPGA devices, will take full advantage of the DSP resource commonly provided in such devices. The hierarchical structure of the proposed algorithm provides the system with a multi-level motion estimation process allowing low resolution estimation for motion detection and further higher resolution stages for motion estimation. An initial MATLAB prototype has demonstrated this algorithm capable of object motion estimation while compensating for camera motion, allowing a moving object to be tracked by a moving camera.

An FPGA Implementation of Hierarchical Motion Estimation for Embedded Oject Tracking
This paper presents the hardware implementation of an algorithm developed to provide automatic motion detection and object tracking functionality embedded within intelligent CCTV systems. The implementation is targeted at an Altera Stratix FPGA making full use of the dedicated DSP resource. The Altera Nios embedded processor provides a platform for the tracking control loop and generic Pan Tilt Zoom camera interface. This paper details the explicit functional stages of the algorithm that lend themselves to an optimised pipelined hardware implementation. This implementation provides maximum data throughput, providing real-time operation of the described algorithm, and enables a moving camera to track a moving object in real time.

Hidden Markov Model based recognition of musical pattern in South Indian Classical Music
Automatic recognition of musical patterns plays a crucial part in Musicological and Ethno musicological research and can become an indispensable tool for the search and comparison of music extracts within a large multimedia database. This paper finds an efficient method for recognizing isolated musical patterns in a monophonic environment, using Hidden Markov Model. Each pattern, to be recognized, is converted into a sequence of frequency jumps by means of a fundamental frequency tracking algorithm, followed by a quantizer. The resulting sequence of frequency jumps is presented to the input of the recognizer which use Hidden Markov Model. The main characteristic of Hidden Markov Model is that it utilizes the stochastic information from the musical frame to recognize the pattern. The methodology is tested in the context of South Indian Classical Music, which exhibits certain characteristics that make the classification task harder, when compared with Western musical tradition. Recognition of 100% has been obtained for the six typical music pattern used in practise. South Indian classical instrument, flute is used for the whole experiment.

Design and implementation of odd-order wave digital lattice lowpass filters, from specifications to Motorol DSP56307EVM module
This thesis is dedicated to applying and developing explicit formulas for the design and implementation of odd-order lattice Lowpass wave digital filters (WDFs) on a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), such as a Motorola DSP56307EVM (Evaluation Module). The direct design method of Gazsi for filter types such as Butterworfh, Chebyshev, inverse Chebyshev, and Cauer (Elliptic) provides a straightforward method for calculating the coefficients without an extensive knowledge of digital signal processing. A program package to design and implement odd-order WDFs, including detailed procedures and examples, is presented in this thesis and includes not only the calculations of the coefficients, but also the simulation on a MATLAB platform and an implementation on a Motorola DSP56307EVM board. It is very quick, effective and convenient to obtain the coefficients when the user enters a few parameters according to the general specifications; to verify the characteristics of the designed filter; to simulate the filter on the MATLAB platform; to implement the filter on the DSP board; and to compare the results between the simulation and the implementation.

Image Analysis Using a Dual-Tree M-Band Wavelet Transform
We propose a 2D generalization to the M-band case of the dual-tree decomposition structure (initially proposed by N. Kingsbury and further investigated by I. Selesnick) based on a Hilbert pair of wavelets. We particularly address (i) the construction of the dual basis and (ii) the resulting directional analysis. We also revisit the necessary pre-processing stage in the M-band case. While several reconstructions are possible because of the redundancy of the representation, we propose a new optimal signal reconstruction technique, which minimizes potential estimation errors. The effectiveness of the proposed M- band decomposition is demonstrated via denoising comparisons on several image types (natural, texture, seismics), with various M-band wavelets and thresholding strategies. Signicant improvements in terms of both overall noise reduction and direction preservation are observed.

Energy Profiling of DSP Applications, A Case Study of an Intelligent ECG Monitor
Proper balance of power and performance for optimum system organization requires precise profiling of the power consumption of different hardware subsystems as well as software functions. Moreover, power consumption of mobile systems is even more important, since the battery is a large portion of the overall size and weight of the system. Average power consumption is only a crude estimate of power requirements and battery life; a much better estimate can be made using dynamic power consumption. Dynamic power consumption is a function of the execution profile of the given application running on specific hardware platform. In this paper we introduce a new environment for energy profiling of DSP applications. The environment consists of a JTAG emulator, a high-resolution HP 3583A multimeter and a workstation that controls devices and stores the traces. We use Texas Instruments’ Real Time Data Exchange mechanism (RTDXÔ) to generate an execution profile and custom procedures for energy profile data acquisition using GPIB interface. We developed custom procedures to correlate and analyze both energy and execution profiles. The environment allows us to improve the system power consumption through changes in software organization and to measure real battery life for the given hardware, software and battery configuration. As a case study, we present the analysis of a real-time portable ECG monitor implemented using a Texas Instruments TMS320C5410-100 processor board, and a Del Mar PWA ECG Amplifier.

A DSP Implementation of OFDM Acoustic Modem
The success of multicarrier modulation in the form of OFDM in radio channels illuminates a path one could take towards high-rate underwater acoustic communications, and recently there are intensive investigations on underwater OFDM. In this paper, we implement the acoustic OFDM transmitter and receiver design of [4, 5] on a TMS320C6713 DSP board. We analyze the workload and identify the most time-consuming operations. Based on the workload analysis, we tune the algorithms and optimize the code to substantially reduce the synchronization time to 0.2 seconds and the processing time of one OFDM block to 1.7 seconds on a DSP processor at 225 MHz. This experimentation provides guidelines on our future work to reduce the per-block processing time to be less than the block duration of 0.23 seconds for real time operations.

Algorithms, Architectures, and Applications for Compressive Video Sensing
The design of conventional sensors is based primarily on the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem, which states that a signal of bandwidth W Hz is fully determined by its discrete-time samples provided the sampling rate exceeds 2W samples per second. For discrete-time signals, the Shannon-Nyquist theorem has a very simple interpretation: the number of data samples must be at least as large as the dimensionality of the signal being sampled and recovered. This important result enables signal processing in the discrete-time domain without any loss of information. However, in an increasing number of applications, the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem dictates an unnecessary and often prohibitively high sampling rate. (See Box 1 for a derivation of the Nyquist rate of a time-varying scene.) As a motivating example, the high resolution of the image sensor hardware in modern cameras reflects the large amount of data sensed to capture an image. A 10-megapixel camera, in effect, takes 10 million measurements of the scene. Yet, almost immediately after acquisition, redundancies in the image are exploited to compress the acquired data significantly, often at compression ratios of 100:1 for visualization and even higher for detection and classification tasks. This example suggests immense wastage in the overall design of conventional cameras.

Region based Active Contour Segmentation
In this paper, we propose a natural framework that allows any region-based segmentation energy to be re-formulated in a local way. We consider local rather than global image statistics and evolve a contour based on local information. Localized contours are capable of segmenting objects with heterogeneous feature profiles that would be difficult to capture correctly using a standard global method. The presented technique is versatile enough to be used with any global region-based active contour energy and instill in it the benefits of localization. We describe this framework and demonstrate the localization of three well-known energies in order to illustrate how our framework can be applied to any energy. We then compare each localized energy to its global counterpart to show the improvements that can be achieved. Next, an in-depth study of the behaviors of these energies in response to the degree of localization is given. Finally, we show results on challenging images to illustrate the robust and accurate segmentations that are possible with this new class of active contour models.

Wavelet Denoising for TDR Dynamic Range Improvement
A technique is presented for removing large amounts of noise present in time-domain-reflectometry (TDR) waveforms to increase the dynamic range of TDR waveforms and TDR based s-parameter measurements.

Optimization of Synthesis Oversampled Complex Filter Banks
An important issue with oversampled FIR analysis filter banks (FBs) is to determine inverse synthesis FBs, when they exist. Given any complex oversampled FIR analysis FB, we first provide an algorithm to determine whether there exists an inverse FIR synthesis system. We also provide a method to ensure the Hermitian symmetry property on the synthesis side, which is serviceable to processing real-valued signals. As an invertible analysis scheme corresponds to a redundant decomposition, there is no unique inverse FB. Given a particular solution, we parameterize the whole family of inverses through a null space projection. The resulting reduced parameter set simplifies design procedures, since the perfect reconstruction constrained optimization problem is recast as an unconstrained optimization problem. The design of optimized synthesis FBs based on time or frequency localization criteria is then investigated, using a simple yet efficient gradient algorithm.

A Nonlinear Stein Based Estimator for Multichannel Image Denoising
The use of multicomponent images has become widespread with the improvement of multisensor systems having increased spatial and spectral resolutions. However, the observed images are often corrupted by an additive Gaussian noise. In this paper, we are interested in multichannel image denoising based on a multiscale representation of the images. A multivariate statistical approach is adopted to take into account both the spatial and the inter-component correlations existing between the different wavelet subbands. More precisely, we propose a new parametric nonlinear estimator which generalizes many reported denoising methods. The derivation of the optimal parameters is achieved by applying Stein’s principle in the multivariate case. Experiments performed on multispectral remote sensing images clearly indicate that our method outperforms conventional wavelet denoising techniques.

Teaching MODEM Concepts and Design Procedure with MATLAB Simulations
MATLAB simulation is used as the primary tool to illustrate concepts, to validate MODEM designs, and to vent' operation of the subsystems employed in DSP based transmitters and receivers presented in a pair of classes on MODEM Design and Digital Receiver Design. The whole gamut of subsystems found in conventional and experimental modem designs are simulated and assembled to form a full end-to-end simulation of an operating MODEM. This paper describes the philosophy used to guide class involvement and assess the experience and the learning value to student participants.

Multirate Systems and Filter Banks
During the last two decades, multirate filter banks have found various applications in many different areas, such as speech coding, scrambling, adaptive signal processing, image compression, signal and image processing applications as well as transmission of several signals through the same channel. The main idea of using multirate filter banks is the ability of the system to separate in the frequency domain the signal under consideration into two or more signals or to compose two or more different signals into a single signal.

Adaptive distributed noise reduction for speech enhancement in wireless acoustic sensor networks
An adaptive distributed noise reduction algorithm for speech enhancement is considered, which operates in a wireless acoustic sensor network where each node collects multiple microphone signals. In previous work, it was shown theoretically that for a stationary scenario, the algorithm provides the same signal estimators as the centralized multi-channel Wiener filter, while significantly compressing the data that is transmitted between the nodes. Here, we present simulation results of a fully adaptive implementation of the algorithm, in a non-stationary acoustic scenario with a moving speaker and two babble noise sources. The algorithm is implemented using a weighted overlap-add technique to reduce the overall input-output delay. It is demonstrated that good results can be obtained by estimating the required signal statistics with a long-term forgetting factor without downdating, even though the signal statistics change along with the iterative filter updates. It is also demonstrated that simultaneous node updating provides a significantly smoother and faster tracking performance compared to sequential node updating.