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At least 235 records · Page 13

Effect of lead-aircraft ground-speed on self-spacing performance using a cockpit display of traffic information

A simulator investigation was conducted to determine the effect of the lead-aircraft ground-speed quantization level on self-spacing performance using a Cockpit Display of Traffic Information (CDTI). The study utilized a simulator employing cathode-ray tubes for the primary flight and navigation displays and highly augmented flight control modes. The pilot's task was to follow, and self-space on, a lead aircraft which was performing an idle-thrust profile descent to an instrument landing system (ILS) approach and landing. The spacing requirement was specified in terms of both a minimum distance and a time interval. The results indicate that the ground-speed quantization level, lead-aircraft scenario, and pilot technique had a significant effect on self-spacing performance. However, the ground-speed quantization level only had a significant effect on the performance when the lead aircraft flew a fast final approach.

Kelly, J. R.

Performance Simulation for Unit-memory Convolutional Codes with Byte-oriented Viterbi Decoding Algorithm

A software package developed to simulate the performance of the byte-oriented Viterbi decoding algorithm for unit-memory (UM) codes on both 3-bit and 4-bit quantized AWGN channels is described. The simulation is shown to require negligible memory and less time than that for the RTMBEP algorith, although they both provide similar performance in terms of symbol-error probability. This makes it possible to compute the symbol-error probability of large codes and to determine the signal-to-noise ratio required to achieve a bit error rate (BER) of 0.000001 for corresponding concatenated systems. A (7, 10/48) UM code, 10-bit Reed-Solomon code combination achieves the required BER at 1.08 dB for a 3-bit quantized channel and at 0.91 dB for a 4-bit quantized channel.

Vo, Q. D.

Optimal block cosine transform image coding for noisy channels

The two dimensional block transform coding scheme based on the discrete cosine transform was studied extensively for image coding applications. While this scheme has proven to be efficient in the absence of channel errors, its performance degrades rapidly over noisy channels. A method is presented for the joint source channel coding optimization of a scheme based on the 2-D block cosine transform when the output of the encoder is to be transmitted via a memoryless design of the quantizers used for encoding the transform coefficients. This algorithm produces a set of locally optimum quantizers and the corresponding binary code assignment for the assumed transform coefficient statistics. To determine the optimum bit assignment among the transform coefficients, an algorithm was used based on the steepest descent method, which under certain convexity conditions on the performance of the channel optimized quantizers, yields the optimal bit allocation. Comprehensive simulation results for the performance of this locally optimum system over noisy channels were obtained and appropriate comparisons against a reference system designed for no channel error were rendered.

Vaishampayan, V.

The capacity of the Hopfield associative memory

Techniques from coding theory are applied to study rigorously the capacity of the Hopfield associative memory. Such a memory stores n-tuple of + or - 1s. The components change depending on a hard-limited version of linear functions of all other components. With symmetric connections between components, a stable state is ultimately reached. By building up the connection matrix as a sum-of-outer products of m fundamental memories, it may be possible to recover a certain one of the m memories by using an initial n-tuple probe vector less than a Hamming distance n/2 away from the fundamental memory. If m fundamental memories are chosen at random, the maximum asymptotic value of m in order that most of the m original memories are exactly recoverable is n/(2 log n). With the added restriction that every one of the m fundamental memories be recoverable exactly, m can be no more than n/(4 log n) asymptotically as n approaches infinity. Extensions are also considered, in particular to capacity under quantization of the outer-product connection matrix. This quantized memory-capacity problem is closely related to the capacity of the quantized Gaussian channel.

Mceliece, Robert J.

Optimal block cosine transform image coding for noisy channels

The two dimensional block transform coding scheme based on the discrete cosine transform was studied extensively for image coding applications. While this scheme has proven to be efficient in the absence of channel errors, its performance degrades rapidly over noisy channels. A method is presented for the joint source channel coding optimiaation of a scheme based on the 2-D block cosine transorm when the output of the encoder is to be transmitted via a memoryless design of the quantizers used for encoding the transform coefficients. This algorithm produces a set of locally optimum quantizers and the corresponding binary code assignment for the assumed transform coefficient statistics. To determine the optimum bit assignment among the transform coefficients, an algorithm was used based on the steepest descent method, which under certain convexity conditions on the performance of the channel optimized quantizers, yields the optimal bit allocation. Comprehensive simulation results for the performance of this locally optimum system over noise channels were obtained and appropriate comparisons against a reference system designed for no channel error were rendered.

Vaishampayan, Vinay A.

A neural net based architecture for the segmentation of mixed gray-level and binary pictures

A neural-net-based architecture is proposed to perform segmentation in real time for mixed gray-level and binary pictures. In this approach, the composite picture is divided into 16 x 16 pixel blocks, which are identified as character blocks or image blocks on the basis of a dichotomy measure computed by an adaptive 16 x 16 neural net. For compression purposes, each image block is further divided into 4 x 4 subblocks; a one-bit nonparametric quantizer is used to encode 16 x 16 character and 4 x 4 image blocks; and the binary map and quantizer levels are obtained through a neural net segmentor over each block. The efficiency of the neural segmentation in terms of computational speed, data compression, and quality of the compressed picture is demonstrated. The effect of weight quantization is also discussed. VLSI implementations of such adaptive neural nets in CMOS technology are described and simulated in real time for a maximum block size of 256 pixels.

Tabatabai, Ali

Digital halftoning methods for selectively partitioning error into achromatic and chromatic channels

A method is described for reducing the visibility of artifacts arising in the display of quantized color images on CRT displays. The method is based on the differential spatial sensitivity of the human visual system to chromatic and achromatic modulations. Because the visual system has the highest spatial and temporal acuity for the luminance component of an image, a technique which will reduce luminance artifacts at the expense of introducing high-frequency chromatic errors is sought. A method based on controlling the correlations between the quantization errors in the individual phosphor images is explored. The luminance component is greatest when the phosphor errors are positively correlated, and is minimized when the phosphor errors are negatively correlated. The greatest effect of the correlation is obtained when the intensity quantization step sizes of the individual phosphors have equal luminances. For the ordered dither algorithm, a version of the method can be implemented by simply inverting the matrix of thresholds for one of the color components.

Mulligan, Jeffrey B.

Compressing subbanded image data with Lempel-Ziv-based coders

A method of improving the compression of image data using Lempel-Ziv-based coding is presented. Image data is first processed with a simple transform, such as the Walsh Hadamard Transform, to produce subbands. The subbanded data can be rounded to eight bits or it can be quantized for higher compression at the cost of some reduction in the quality of the reconstructed image. The data is then run-length coded to take advantage of the large runs of zeros produced by quantization. Compression results are presented and contrasted with a subband compression method using quantization followed by run-length coding and Huffman coding. The Lempel-Ziv-based coding in conjunction with run-length coding produces the best compression results at the same reconstruction quality (compared with the Huffman-based coding) on the image data used.

Glover, Daniel

Applications of wavelet-based compression to multidimensional Earth science data

A data compression algorithm involving vector quantization (VQ) and the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is applied to two different types of multidimensional digital earth-science data. The algorithms (WVQ) is optimized for each particular application through an optimization procedure that assigns VQ parameters to the wavelet transform subbands subject to constraints on compression ratio and encoding complexity. Preliminary results of compressing global ocean model data generated on a Thinking Machines CM-200 supercomputer are presented. The WVQ scheme is used in both a predictive and nonpredictive mode. Parameters generated by the optimization algorithm are reported, as are signal-to-noise (SNR) measurements of actual quantized data. The problem of extrapolating hydrodynamic variables across the continental landmasses in order to compute the DWT on a rectangular grid is discussed. Results are also presented for compressing Landsat TM 7-band data using the WVQ scheme. The formulation of the optimization problem is presented along with SNR measurements of actual quantized data. Postprocessing applications are considered in which the seven spectral bands are clustered into 256 clusters using a k-means algorithm and analyzed using the Los Alamos multispectral data analysis program, SPECTRUM, both before and after being compressed using the WVQ program.

Bradley, Jonathan N.

Information efficiency in visual communication

This paper evaluates the quantization process in the context of the end-to-end performance of the visual-communication channel. Results show that the trade-off between data transmission and visual quality revolves around the information in the acquired signal, not around its energy. Improved information efficiency is gained by frequency dependent quantization that maintains the information capacity of the channel and reduces the entropy of the encoded signal. Restorations with energy bit-allocation lose both in sharpness and clarity relative to restorations with information bit-allocation. Thus, quantization with information bit-allocation is preferred for high information efficiency and visual quality in optimized visual communication.

Alter-Gartenberg, Rachel

Subband/transform functions for image processing

Functions for image data processing written for use with the MATLAB(TM) software package are presented. These functions provide the capability to transform image data with block transformations (such as the Walsh Hadamard) and to produce spatial frequency subbands of the transformed data. Block transforms are equivalent to simple subband systems. The transform coefficients are reordered using a simple permutation to give subbands. The low frequency subband is a low resolution version of the original image, while the higher frequency subbands contain edge information. The transform functions can be cascaded to provide further decomposition into more subbands. If the cascade is applied to all four of the first stage subbands (in the case of a four band decomposition), then a uniform structure of sixteen bands is obtained. If the cascade is applied only to the low frequency subband, an octave structure of seven bands results. Functions for the inverse transforms are also given. These functions can be used for image data compression systems. The transforms do not in themselves produce data compression, but prepare the data for quantization and compression. Sample quantization functions for subbands are also given. A typical compression approach is to subband the image data, quantize it, then use statistical coding (e.g., run-length coding followed by Huffman coding) for compression. Contour plots of image data and subbanded data are shown.

Glover, Daniel

Studies on image compression and image reconstruction

During this six month period our works concentrated on three, somewhat different areas. We looked at and developed a number of error concealment schemes for use in a variety of video coding environments. This work is described in an accompanying (draft) Masters thesis. In the thesis we describe application of this techniques to the MPEG video coding scheme. We felt that the unique frame ordering approach used in the MPEG scheme would be a challenge to any error concealment/error recovery technique. We continued with our work in the vector quantization area. We have also developed a new type of vector quantizer, which we call a scan predictive vector quantization. The scan predictive VQ was tested on data processed at Goddard to approximate Landsat 7 HRMSI resolution and compared favorably with existing VQ techniques. A paper describing this work is included. The third area is concerned more with reconstruction than compression. While there is a variety of efficient lossless image compression schemes, they all have a common property that they use past data to encode future data. This is done either via taking differences, context modeling, or by building dictionaries. When encoding large images, this common property becomes a common flaw. When the user wishes to decode just a portion of the image, the requirement that the past history be available forces the decoding of a significantly larger portion of the image than desired by the user. Even with intelligent partitioning of the image dataset, the number of pixels decoded may be four times the number of pixels requested. We have developed an adaptive scanning strategy which can be used with any lossless compression scheme and which lowers the additional number of pixels to be decoded to about 7 percent of the number of pixels requested! A paper describing these results is included.

Sayood, Khalid

An efficient system for reliably transmitting image and video data over low bit rate noisy channels

This research project is intended to develop an efficient system for reliably transmitting image and video data over low bit rate noisy channels. The basic ideas behind the proposed approach are the following: employ statistical-based image modeling to facilitate pre- and post-processing and error detection, use spare redundancy that the source compression did not remove to add robustness, and implement coded modulation to improve bandwidth efficiency and noise rejection. Over the last six months, progress has been made on various aspects of the project. Through our studies of the integrated system, a list-based iterative Trellis decoder has been developed. The decoder accepts feedback from a post-processor which can detect channel errors in the reconstructed image. The error detection is based on the Huber Markov random field image model for the compressed image. The compression scheme used here is that of JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). Experiments were performed and the results are quite encouraging. The principal ideas here are extendable to other compression techniques. In addition, research was also performed on unequal error protection channel coding, subband vector quantization as a means of source coding, and post processing for reducing coding artifacts. Our studies on unequal error protection (UEP) coding for image transmission focused on examining the properties of the UEP capabilities of convolutional codes. The investigation of subband vector quantization employed a wavelet transform with special emphasis on exploiting interband redundancy. The outcome of this investigation included the development of three algorithms for subband vector quantization. The reduction of transform coding artifacts was studied with the aid of a non-Gaussian Markov random field model. This results in improved image decompression. These studies are summarized and the technical papers included in the appendices.

Costello, Daniel J., Jr.

High Order Entropy-Constrained Residual VQ for Lossless Compression of Images

High order entropy coding is a powerful technique for exploiting high order statistical dependencies. However, the exponentially high complexity associated with such a method often discourages its use. In this paper, an entropy-constrained residual vector quantization method is proposed for lossless compression of images. The method consists of first quantizing the input image using a high order entropy-constrained residual vector quantizer and then coding the residual image using a first order entropy coder. The distortion measure used in the entropy-constrained optimization is essentially the first order entropy of the residual image. Experimental results show very competitive performance.

Kossentini, Faouzi

Image Data Compression Having Minimum Perceptual Error

A method is presented for performing color or grayscale image compression that eliminates redundant and invisible image components. The image compression uses a Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and each DCT coefficient yielded by the transform is quantized by an entry in a quantization matrix which determines the perceived image quality and the bit rate of the image being compressed. The quantization matrix comprises visual masking by luminance and contrast technique all resulting in a minimum perceptual error for any given bit rate, or minimum bit rate for a given perceptual error.

Watson, Andrew B.

Conditional Entropy-Constrained Residual VQ with Application to Image Coding

This paper introduces an extension of entropy-constrained residual vector quantization (VQ) where intervector dependencies are exploited. The method, which we call conditional entropy-constrained residual VQ, employs a high-order entropy conditioning strategy that captures local information in the neighboring vectors. When applied to coding images, the proposed method is shown to achieve better rate-distortion performance than that of entropy-constrained residual vector quantization with less computational complexity and lower memory requirements. Moreover, it can be designed to support progressive transmission in a natural way. It is also shown to outperform some of the best predictive and finite-state VQ techniques reported in the literature. This is due partly to the joint optimization between the residual vector quantizer and a high-order conditional entropy coder as well as the efficiency of the multistage residual VQ structure and the dynamic nature of the prediction.

Kossentini, Faouzi

Cascade Error Projection: A Learning Algorithm for Hardware Implementation

In this paper, we workout a detailed mathematical analysis for a new learning algorithm termed Cascade Error Projection (CEP) and a general learning frame work. This frame work can be used to obtain the cascade correlation learning algorithm by choosing a particular set of parameters. Furthermore, CEP learning algorithm is operated only on one layer, whereas the other set of weights can be calculated deterministically. In association with the dynamical stepsize change concept to convert the weight update from infinite space into a finite space, the relation between the current stepsize and the previous energy level is also given and the estimation procedure for optimal stepsize is used for validation of our proposed technique. The weight values of zero are used for starting the learning for every layer, and a single hidden unit is applied instead of using a pool of candidate hidden units similar to cascade correlation scheme. Therefore, simplicity in hardware implementation is also obtained. Furthermore, this analysis allows us to select from other methods (such as the conjugate gradient descent or the Newton's second order) one of which will be a good candidate for the learning technique. The choice of learning technique depends on the constraints of the problem (e.g., speed, performance, and hardware implementation); one technique may be more suitable than others. Moreover, for a discrete weight space, the theoretical analysis presents the capability of learning with limited weight quantization. Finally, 5- to 8-bit parity and chaotic time series prediction problems are investigated; the simulation results demonstrate that 4-bit or more weight quantization is sufficient for learning neural network using CEP. In addition, it is demonstrated that this technique is able to compensate for less bit weight resolution by incorporating additional hidden units. However, generation result may suffer somewhat with lower bit weight quantization.

Duong, Tuan A.

Perceptual Image Compression in Telemedicine

The next era of space exploration, especially the "Mission to Planet Earth" will generate immense quantities of image data. For example, the Earth Observing System (EOS) is expected to generate in excess of one terabyte/day. NASA confronts a major technical challenge in managing this great flow of imagery: in collection, pre-processing, transmission to earth, archiving, and distribution to scientists at remote locations. Expected requirements in most of these areas clearly exceed current technology. Part of the solution to this problem lies in efficient image compression techniques. For much of this imagery, the ultimate consumer is the human eye. In this case image compression should be designed to match the visual capacities of the human observer. We have developed three techniques for optimizing image compression for the human viewer. The first consists of a formula, developed jointly with IBM and based on psychophysical measurements, that computes a DCT quantization matrix for any specified combination of viewing distance, display resolution, and display brightness. This DCT quantization matrix is used in most recent standards for digital image compression (JPEG, MPEG, CCITT H.261). The second technique optimizes the DCT quantization matrix for each individual image, based on the contents of the image. This is accomplished by means of a model of visual sensitivity to compression artifacts. The third technique extends the first two techniques to the realm of wavelet compression. Together these two techniques will allow systematic perceptual optimization of image compression in NASA imaging systems. Many of the image management challenges faced by NASA are mirrored in the field of telemedicine. Here too there are severe demands for transmission and archiving of large image databases, and the imagery is ultimately used primarily by human observers, such as radiologists. In this presentation I will describe some of our preliminary explorations of the applications of our technology to the special problems of telemedicine.

Watson, Andrew B.