Nested turbo codes for the costa problem

Driven by applications in data-hiding, MIMO broadcast channel coding, precoding for interference cancellation, and transmitter cooperation in wireless networks, Costa coding has lately become a very active research area. In this paper, we first offer code design guidelines in terms of source- channel coding for algebraic binning. We then address practical code design based on nested lattice codes and propose nested turbo codes using turbo-like trellis-coded quantization (TCQ) for source coding and turbo trellis-coded modulation (TTCM) for channel coding. Compared to TCQ, turbo-like TCQ offers structural similarity between the source and channel coding components, leading to more efficient nesting with TTCM and better source coding performance. Due to the difference in effective dimensionality between turbo-like TCQ and TTCM, there is a performance tradeoff between these two components when they are nested together, meaning that the performance of turbo-like TCQ worsens as the TTCM code becomes stronger and vice versa. Optimization of this performance tradeoff leads to our code design that outperforms existing TCQ/TCM and TCQ/TTCM constructions and exhibits a gap of 0.94, 1.42 and 2.65 dB to the Costa capacity at 2.0, 1.0, and 0.5 bits/sample, respectively

Near-capacity dirty-paper code design : a source-channel coding approach

This paper examines near-capacity dirty-paper code designs based on source-channel coding. We first point out that the performance loss in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in our code designs can be broken into the sum of the packing loss from channel coding and a modulo loss, which is a function of the granular loss from source coding and the target dirty-paper coding rate (or SNR). We then examine practical designs by combining trellis-coded quantization (TCQ) with both systematic and nonsystematic irregular repeat-accumulate (IRA) codes. Like previous approaches, we exploit the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart technique for capacity-approaching IRA code design; but unlike previous approaches, we emphasize the role of strong source coding to achieve as much granular gain as possible using TCQ. Instead of systematic doping, we employ two relatively shifted TCQ codebooks, where the shift is optimized (via tuning the EXIT charts) to facilitate the IRA code design. Our designs synergistically combine TCQ with IRA codes so that they work together as well as they do individually. By bringing together TCQ (the best quantizer from the source coding community) and EXIT chart-based IRA code designs (the best from the channel coding community), we are able to approach the theoretical limit of dirty-paper coding. For example, at 0.25 bit per symbol (b/s), our best code design (with 2048-state TCQ) performs only 0.630 dB away from the Shannon capacity

Standardized field testing of assistant robots in a Mars-like environment

Controlled testing on standard tasks and within standard environments can provide meaningful performance comparisons between robots of heterogeneous design. But because they must perform practical tasks in unstructured, and therefore non-standard, environments, the benefits of this approach have barely begun to accrue for field robots. This work describes a desert trial of six student prototypes of astronaut-support robots using a set of standardized engineering tests developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), along with three operational tests in natural Mars-like terrain. The results suggest that standards developed for emergency response robots are also applicable to the astronaut support domain, yielding useful insights into the differences in capabilities between robots and real design improvements. The exercise shows the value of combining repeatable engineering tests with task-specific application-testing in the field

Towards a Scalable Hardware/Software Co-Design Platform for Real-time Pedestrian Tracking Based on a ZYNQ-7000 Device

Currently, most designers face a daunting task to research different design flows and learn the intricacies of specific software from various manufacturers in hardware/software co-design. An urgent need of creating a scalable hardware/software co-design platform has become a key strategic element for developing hardware/software integrated systems. In this paper, we propose a new design flow for building a scalable co-design platform on FPGA-based system-on-chip. We employ an integrated approach to implement a histogram oriented gradients (HOG) and a support vector machine (SVM) classification on a programmable device for pedestrian tracking. Not only was hardware resource analysis reported, but the precision and success rates of pedestrian tracking on nine open access image data sets are also analysed. Finally, our proposed design flow can be used for any real-time image processingrelated products on programmable ZYNQ-based embedded systems, which benefits from a reduced design time and provide a scalable solution for embedded image processing products

Review Paper on Image and Video Based Steganography

مع التطور الكبير في تقنيات المعلومات الإلكترونية والشبكات ، وفي ضوء بعض الظروف التي تفرض العمل على الإنترنت ، والتي تعتبر بيئة غير آمنة للمعلومات السرية ، أصبح الحفاظ على أمن البيانات ذات أولوية مهمة. من أهم التقنيات المستخدمة للحفاظ على سرية البيانات المنقولة وعدم إخضاعها للمهاجمين هي الإخفاء والتشفير ، وتعتمد هاتان التقنيتان أيضًا على الوسيط الذي ينقل البيانات السرية ، سواء كان ملف صورة أو صوت أو فيديو. علم إخفاء المعلومات هو علم دمج البيانات الرقمية بطريقة لا يمكن لأحد الشك في وجودها. التشفير هو تقنية أخرى تستخدم لحماية البيانات ، عند استخدامه مع إخفاء المعلومات يزيد من قوة حماية المعلومات. تقدم هذه الورقة لمحة عامة عن تقنيات إخفاء المعلومات النصية داخل ملفات الصور والفيديو. تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى تقديم ملخص للطريقة الأكثر أمانًا وأمانًا وقدرة حمولتها على إخفاء البيانات.With the great development in electronic and network information technologies, and in light of some circumstances that impose work on the Internet, which is considered to be an insecure environment for confidential information, therefore maintaining data security has become an important priority. The most important techniques used to maintain the confidentiality of the transferred data and not subject it to attackers are concealment and encryption, and these two technologies also depend on the medium that transmits the secret data, whether it is an image file, sound or video. Steganography is the science of embedding digital data in such a way no one can doubt its existence. Encryption is another technology used to protect data, when used with steganography increases the power of information protection. This paper provides an overview of techniques for hiding textual information within image and video files. This study aims to provide a summary of the method that is safer, more secure, and the ability of its payload to hide data