116 research outputs found

    On Sparse Coding as an Alternate Transform in Video Coding

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    In video compression, specifically in the prediction process, a residual signal is calculated by subtracting the predicted from the original signal, which represents the error of this process. This residual signal is usually transformed by a discrete cosine transform (DCT) from the pixel, into the frequency domain. It is then quantized, which filters more or less high frequencies (depending on a quality parameter). The quantized signal is then entropy encoded usually by a context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding engine (CABAC), and written into a bitstream. In the decoding phase the process is reversed. DCT and quantization in combination are efficient tools, but they are not performing well at lower bitrates and creates distortion and side effect. The proposed method uses sparse coding as an alternate transform which compresses well at lower bitrates, but not well at high bitrates. The decision which transform is used is based on a rate-distortion optimization (RDO) cost calculation to get both transforms in their optimal performance range. The proposed method is implemented in high efficient video coding (HEVC) test model HM-16.18 and high efficient video coding for screen content coding (HEVC-SCC) for test model HM-16.18+SCM-8.7, with a Bjontegaard rate difference (BD-rate) saving, which archives up to 5.5%, compared to the standard

    Artificial Intelligence-based Cybersecurity for Connected and Automated Vehicles

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    The damaging effects of cyberattacks to an industry like the Cooperative Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) can be tremendous. From the least important to the worst ones, one can mention for example the damage in the reputation of vehicle manufacturers, the increased denial of customers to adopt CCAM, the loss of working hours (having direct impact on the European GDP), material damages, increased environmental pollution due e.g., to traffic jams or malicious modifications in sensors’ firmware, and ultimately, the great danger for human lives, either they are drivers, passengers or pedestrians. Connected vehicles will soon become a reality on our roads, bringing along new services and capabilities, but also technical challenges and security threats. To overcome these risks, the CARAMEL project has developed several anti-hacking solutions for the new generation of vehicles. CARAMEL (Artificial Intelligence-based Cybersecurity for Connected and Automated Vehicles), a research project co-funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 framework programme, is a project consortium with 15 organizations from 8 European countries together with 3 Korean partners. The project applies a proactive approach based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques to detect and prevent potential cybersecurity threats to autonomous and connected vehicles. This approach has been addressed based on four fundamental pillars, namely: Autonomous Mobility, Connected Mobility, Electromobility, and Remote Control Vehicle. This book presents theory and results from each of these technical directions

    Feasibility Study of High-Level Synthesis : Implementation of a Real-Time HEVC Intra Encoder on FPGA

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    High-Level Synthesis (HLS) on automatisoitu suunnitteluprosessi, joka pyrkii parantamaan tuottavuutta perinteisiin suunnittelumenetelmiin verrattuna, nostamalla suunnittelun abstraktiota rekisterisiirtotasolta (RTL) käyttäytymistasolle. Erilaisia kaupallisia HLS-työkaluja on ollut markkinoilla aina 1990-luvulta lähtien, mutta vasta äskettäin ne ovat alkaneet saada hyväksyntää teollisuudessa sekä akateemisessa maailmassa. Hidas käyttöönottoaste on johtunut pääasiassa huonommasta tulosten laadusta (QoR) kuin mitä on ollut mahdollista tavanomaisilla laitteistokuvauskielillä (HDL). Uusimmat HLS-työkalusukupolvet ovat kuitenkin kaventaneet QoR-aukkoa huomattavasti. Tämä väitöskirja tutkii HLS:n soveltuvuutta videokoodekkien kehittämiseen. Se esittelee useita HLS-toteutuksia High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) -koodaukselle, joka on keskeinen mahdollistava tekniikka lukuisille nykyaikaisille mediasovelluksille. HEVC kaksinkertaistaa koodaustehokkuuden edeltäjäänsä Advanced Video Coding (AVC) -standardiin verrattuna, saavuttaen silti saman subjektiivisen visuaalisen laadun. Tämä tyypillisesti saavutetaan huomattavalla laskennallisella lisäkustannuksella. Siksi reaaliaikainen HEVC vaatii automatisoituja suunnittelumenetelmiä, joita voidaan käyttää rautatoteutus- (HW ) ja varmennustyön minimoimiseen. Tässä väitöskirjassa ehdotetaan HLS:n käyttöä koko enkooderin suunnitteluprosessissa. Dataintensiivisistä koodaustyökaluista, kuten intra-ennustus ja diskreetit muunnokset, myös enemmän kontrollia vaativiin kokonaisuuksiin, kuten entropiakoodaukseen. Avoimen lähdekoodin Kvazaar HEVC -enkooderin C-lähdekoodia hyödynnetään tässä työssä referenssinä HLS-suunnittelulle sekä toteutuksen varmentamisessa. Suorituskykytulokset saadaan ja raportoidaan ohjelmoitavalla porttimatriisilla (FPGA). Tämän väitöskirjan tärkein tuotos on HEVC intra enkooderin prototyyppi. Prototyyppi koostuu Nokia AirFrame Cloud Server palvelimesta, varustettuna kahdella 2.4 GHz:n 14-ytiminen Intel Xeon prosessorilla, sekä kahdesta Intel Arria 10 GX FPGA kiihdytinkortista, jotka voidaan kytkeä serveriin käyttäen joko peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) liitäntää tai 40 gigabitin Ethernettiä. Prototyyppijärjestelmä saavuttaa reaaliaikaisen 4K enkoodausnopeuden, jopa 120 kuvaa sekunnissa. Lisäksi järjestelmän suorituskykyä on helppo skaalata paremmaksi lisäämällä järjestelmään käytännössä minkä tahansa määrän verkkoon kytkettäviä FPGA-kortteja. Monimutkaisen HEVC:n tehokas mallinnus ja sen monipuolisten ominaisuuksien mukauttaminen reaaliaikaiselle HW HEVC enkooderille ei ole triviaali tehtävä, koska HW-toteutukset ovat perinteisesti erittäin aikaa vieviä. Tämä väitöskirja osoittaa, että HLS:n avulla pystytään nopeuttamaan kehitysaikaa, tarjoamaan ennen näkemätöntä suunnittelun skaalautuvuutta, ja silti osoittamaan kilpailukykyisiä QoR-arvoja ja absoluuttista suorituskykyä verrattuna olemassa oleviin toteutuksiin.High-Level Synthesis (HLS) is an automated design process that seeks to improve productivity over traditional design methods by increasing design abstraction from register transfer level (RTL) to behavioural level. Various commercial HLS tools have been available on the market since the 1990s, but only recently they have started to gain adoption across industry and academia. The slow adoption rate has mainly stemmed from lower quality of results (QoR) than obtained with conventional hardware description languages (HDLs). However, the latest HLS tool generations have substantially narrowed the QoR gap. This thesis studies the feasibility of HLS in video codec development. It introduces several HLS implementations for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) , that is the key enabling technology for numerous modern media applications. HEVC doubles the coding efficiency over its predecessor Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard for the same subjective visual quality, but typically at the cost of considerably higher computational complexity. Therefore, real-time HEVC calls for automated design methodologies that can be used to minimize the HW implementation and verification effort. This thesis proposes to use HLS throughout the whole encoder design process. From data-intensive coding tools, like intra prediction and discrete transforms, to more control-oriented tools, such as entropy coding. The C source code of the open-source Kvazaar HEVC encoder serves as a design entry point for the HLS flow, and it is also utilized in design verification. The performance results are gathered with and reported for field programmable gate array (FPGA) . The main contribution of this thesis is an HEVC intra encoder prototype that is built on a Nokia AirFrame Cloud Server equipped with 2.4 GHz dual 14-core Intel Xeon processors and two Intel Arria 10 GX FPGA Development Kits, that can be connected to the server via peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) generation 3 or 40 Gigabit Ethernet. The proof-of-concept system achieves real-time. 4K coding speed up to 120 fps, which can be further scaled up by adding practically any number of network-connected FPGA cards. Overcoming the complexity of HEVC and customizing its rich features for a real-time HEVC encoder implementation on hardware is not a trivial task, as hardware development has traditionally turned out to be very time-consuming. This thesis shows that HLS is able to boost the development time, provide previously unseen design scalability, and still result in competitive performance and QoR over state-of-the-art hardware implementations

    CNN-based Prediction of Partition Path for VVC Fast Inter Partitioning Using Motion Fields

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    The Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard has been recently finalized by the Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET). Compared to the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, VVC offers about 50% compression efficiency gain, in terms of Bjontegaard Delta-Rate (BD-rate), at the cost of a 10-fold increase in encoding complexity. In this paper, we propose a method based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to speed up the inter partitioning process in VVC. Firstly, a novel representation for the quadtree with nested multi-type tree (QTMT) partition is introduced, derived from the partition path. Secondly, we develop a U-Net-based CNN taking a multi-scale motion vector field as input at the Coding Tree Unit (CTU) level. The purpose of CNN inference is to predict the optimal partition path during the Rate-Distortion Optimization (RDO) process. To achieve this, we divide CTU into grids and predict the Quaternary Tree (QT) depth and Multi-type Tree (MT) split decisions for each cell of the grid. Thirdly, an efficient partition pruning algorithm is introduced to employ the CNN predictions at each partitioning level to skip RDO evaluations of unnecessary partition paths. Finally, an adaptive threshold selection scheme is designed, making the trade-off between complexity and efficiency scalable. Experiments show that the proposed method can achieve acceleration ranging from 16.5% to 60.2% under the RandomAccess Group Of Picture 32 (RAGOP32) configuration with a reasonable efficiency drop ranging from 0.44% to 4.59% in terms of BD-rate, which surpasses other state-of-the-art solutions. Additionally, our method stands out as one of the lightest approaches in the field, which ensures its applicability to other encoders

    Analysis, Development And Design For Early Fault Detection And Fire Safety In Lithium-Ion Battery Technology

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    Energy storage technologies in its natural form play a key role in the electrical infrastructure, renewable and mobility industry. This form includes the material nomenclature for cell. technology, battery module design, Battery enclosure system design, control, and communication strategy, chemistry profile of various cell technologies, formation and formfactors of cell structure, electrical and mechanical properties of a lithium-ion cell, behavior of the cell under high voltage, low voltage, elevated temperature and lower temperature, multiple charging of a lithium-ion batteries. Energy storage industry is growing rapidly, and the industry is experiencing an unprecedented safety concern and issues in terms of fire and explosion at cell and system level. There has been. other research conducted with proposed theories and recommendations to resolve these issues. The failure modes for energy storage systems can be derived using different methodologies such as failure mode effects analysis (FMEA). Early detection mode and strategies in lithium-ion batteries to overcome the failure modes can be caused by endothermic reaction in the cell, further protection. devices, fire inhibition and ventilation. Endothermic safety involves modifications of materials in anode, cathode, and electrolyte. Chemical components added to the battery electrolyte improve the characteristics helping in the improvement of solid-electrolyte interphase and stability. Traditional energy storage system protection device fuse at the cell level, and contactors at the rack level and circuit breakers, current interrupt devices, and positive temperature coefficient devices at the system level. This research will employ classical experimental methods to explore, review and evaluate all the five main energy technologies and narrow down to electrochemical energy storage technologies. with the two main market ready lithium-ion battery technology (LiFePO4/ G and NMC/G) technology cells and why are they valuable in the energy storage and E-mobility space. Also, will focus on the electrical, mechanical design, testing of the battery module into a rack system, advancements in battery chemistries, relevant modes, mechanisms of potential failures, and early detection strategies to overcome these failures. Finally, how the problems of fires, safety concerns and difficulty in transporting already fully assembled energy storage systems can be resolved and be demystified in lithium-ion technology. Keywords Control strategy, Energy storage system, electrolyte, failure mode, early detection, Lithium-Ion cell technology, Battey system

    Network and Content Intelligence for 360 Degree Video Streaming Optimization

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    In recent years, 360° videos, a.k.a. spherical frames, became popular among users creating an immersive streaming experience. Along with the advances in smart- phones and Head Mounted Devices (HMD) technology, many content providers have facilitated to host and stream 360° videos in both on-demand and live stream- ing modes. Therefore, many different applications have already arisen leveraging these immersive videos, especially to give viewers an impression of presence in a digital environment. For example, with 360° videos, now it is possible to connect people in a remote meeting in an interactive way which essentially increases the productivity of the meeting. Also, creating interactive learning materials using 360° videos for students will help deliver the learning outcomes effectively. However, streaming 360° videos is not an easy task due to several reasons. First, 360° video frames are 4–6 times larger than normal video frames to achieve the same quality as a normal video. Therefore, delivering these videos demands higher bandwidth in the network. Second, processing relatively larger frames requires more computational resources at the end devices, particularly for end user devices with limited resources. This will impact not only the delivery of 360° videos but also many other applications running on shared resources. Third, these videos need to be streamed with very low latency requirements due their interactive nature. Inability to satisfy these requirements can result in poor Quality of Experience (QoE) for the user. For example, insufficient bandwidth incurs frequent rebuffer- ing and poor video quality. Also, inadequate computational capacity can cause faster battery draining and unnecessary heating of the device, causing discomfort to the user. Motion or cyber–sickness to the user will be prevalent if there is an unnecessary delay in streaming. These circumstances will hinder providing im- mersive streaming experiences to the much-needed communities, especially those who do not have enough network resources. To address the above challenges, we believe that enhancements to the three main components in video streaming pipeline, server, network and client, are essential. Starting from network, it is beneficial for network providers to identify 360° video flows as early as possible and understand their behaviour in the network to effec- tively allocate sufficient resources for this video delivery without compromising the quality of other services. Content servers, at one end of this streaming pipeline, re- quire efficient 360° video frame processing mechanisms to support adaptive video streaming mechanisms such as ABR (Adaptive Bit Rate) based streaming, VP aware streaming, a streaming paradigm unique to 360° videos that select only part of the larger video frame that fall within the user-visible region, etc. On the other end, the client can be combined with edge-assisted streaming to deliver 360° video content with reduced latency and higher quality. Following the above optimization strategies, in this thesis, first, we propose a mech- anism named 360NorVic to extract 360° video flows from encrypted video traffic and analyze their traffic characteristics. We propose Machine Learning (ML) mod- els to classify 360° and normal videos under different scenarios such as offline, near real-time, VP-aware streaming and Mobile Network Operator (MNO) level stream- ing. Having extracted 360° video traffic traces both in packet and flow level data at higher accuracy, we analyze and understand the differences between 360° and normal video patterns in the encrypted traffic domain that is beneficial for effec- tive resource optimization for enhancing 360° video delivery. Second, we present a WGAN (Wesserstien Generative Adversarial Network) based data generation mechanism (namely VideoTrain++) to synthesize encrypted network video traffic, taking minimal data. Leveraging synthetic data, we show improved performance in 360° video traffic analysis, especially in ML-based classification in 360NorVic. Thirdly, we propose an effective 360° video frame partitioning mechanism (namely VASTile) at the server side to support VP-aware 360° video streaming with dy- namic tiles (or variable tiles) of different sizes and locations on the frame. VASTile takes a visual attention map on the video frames as the input and applies a com- putational geometric approach to generate a non-overlapping tile configuration to cover the video frames adaptive to the visual attention. We present VASTile as a scalable approach for video frame processing at the servers and a method to re- duce bandwidth consumption in network data transmission. Finally, by applying VASTile to the individual user VP at the client side and utilizing cache storage of Multi Access Edge Computing (MEC) servers, we propose OpCASH, a mech- anism to personalize the 360° video streaming with dynamic tiles with the edge assistance. While proposing an ILP based solution to effectively select cached variable tiles from MEC servers that might not be identical to the requested VP tiles by user, but still effectively cover the same VP region, OpCASH maximize the cache utilization and reduce the number of requests to the content servers in congested core network. With this approach, we demonstrate the gain in latency and bandwidth saving and video quality improvement in personalized 360° video streaming

    SVM based approach for complexity control of HEVC intra coding

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    The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is adopted by various video applications in recent years. Because of its high computational demand, controlling the complexity of HEVC is of paramount importance to appeal to the varying requirements in many applications, including power-constrained video coding, video streaming, and cloud gaming. Most of the existing complexity control methods are only capable of considering a subset of the decision space, which leads to low coding efficiency. While the efficiency of machine learning methods such as Support Vector Machines (SVM) can be employed for higher precision decision making, the current SVM-based techniques for HEVC provide a fixed decision boundary which results in different coding complexities for different video content. Although this might be suitable for complexity reduction, it is not acceptable for complexity control. This paper proposes an adjustable classification approach for Coding Unit (CU) partitioning, which addresses the mentioned problems of complexity control. Firstly, a novel set of features for fast CU partitioning is designed using image processing techniques. Then, a flexible classification method based on SVM is proposed to model the CU partitioning problem. This approach allows adjusting the performance-complexity trade-off, even after the training phase. Using this model, and a novel adaptive thresholding technique, an algorithm is presented to deliver video encoding within the target coding complexity, while maximizing the coding efficiency. Experimental results justify the superiority of this method over the state-of-the-art methods, with target complexities ranging from 20% to 100%.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

    Lithium-Ion Batteries

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    Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), as a key part of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, have become increasingly important in recent years, owing to their potential impact on building a more sustainable future. Compared with other batteries developed, LIBs offer high energy density, high discharge power, and a long service life. These characteristics have facilitated a remarkable advance of LIBs in many frontiers, including electric vehicles, portable and flexible electronics, and stationary applications. Since the field of LIBs is advancing rapidly and attracting an increasing number of researchers, it is necessary to often provide the community with the latest updates. Therefore, this book was designed to focus on updating the electrochemical community with the latest advances and prospects on various aspects of LIBs. The materials presented in this book cover advances in several fronts of the technology, ranging from detailed fundamental studies of the electrochemical cell to investigations to better improve parameters related to battery packs

    Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society

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    This book features the manuscripts accepted for the Special Issue “Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society—Sensing Systems and Pervasive Intelligence” of the MDPI journal Sensors. Most of the papers come from a selection of the best papers of the 2019 edition of the “Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society” (APPLEPIES) Conference, which was held in November 2019. All these papers have been significantly enhanced with novel experimental results. The papers give an overview of the trends in research and development activities concerning the pervasive application of electronics in industry, the environment, and society. The focus of these papers is on cyber physical systems (CPS), with research proposals for new sensor acquisition and ADC (analog to digital converter) methods, high-speed communication systems, cybersecurity, big data management, and data processing including emerging machine learning techniques. Physical implementation aspects are discussed as well as the trade-off found between functional performance and hardware/system costs

    Multimedia Forensics

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    This book is open access. Media forensics has never been more relevant to societal life. Not only media content represents an ever-increasing share of the data traveling on the net and the preferred communications means for most users, it has also become integral part of most innovative applications in the digital information ecosystem that serves various sectors of society, from the entertainment, to journalism, to politics. Undoubtedly, the advances in deep learning and computational imaging contributed significantly to this outcome. The underlying technologies that drive this trend, however, also pose a profound challenge in establishing trust in what we see, hear, and read, and make media content the preferred target of malicious attacks. In this new threat landscape powered by innovative imaging technologies and sophisticated tools, based on autoencoders and generative adversarial networks, this book fills an important gap. It presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art forensics capabilities that relate to media attribution, integrity and authenticity verification, and counter forensics. Its content is developed to provide practitioners, researchers, photo and video enthusiasts, and students a holistic view of the field
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