88 research outputs found

    Performance of direct-oversampling correlator-type receivers in chaos-based DS-CDMA systems over frequency non-selective fading channels

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    In this paper, we present a study on the performance of direct-oversampling correlator-type receivers in chaos-based direct-sequence code division multiple access systems over frequency non-selective fading channels. At the input, the received signal is sampled at a sampling rate higher than the chip rate. This oversampling step is used to precisely determine the delayed-signal components from multipath fading channels, which can be combined together by a correlator for the sake of increasing the SNR at its output. The main advantage of using direct-oversampling correlator-type receivers is not only their low energy consumption due to their simple structure, but also their ability to exploit the non-selective fading characteristic of multipath channels to improve the overall system performance in scenarios with limited data speeds and low energy requirements, such as low-rate wireless personal area networks. Mathematical models in discrete-time domain for the conventional transmitting side with multiple access operation, the generalized non-selective Rayleigh fading channel, and the proposed receiver are provided and described. A rough theoretical bit-error-rate (BER) expression is first derived by means of Gaussian approximation. We then define the main component in the expression and build its probability mass function through numerical computation. The final BER estimation is carried out by integrating the rough expression over possible discrete values of the PFM. In order to validate our findings, PC simulation is performed and simulated performance is compared with the corresponding estimated one. Obtained results show that the system performance get better with the increment of the number of paths in the channel.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

    Methods of covert communication of speech signals based on a bio-inspired principle

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    This work presents two speech hiding methods based on a bio-inspired concept known as the ability of adaptation of speech signals. A cryptographic model uses the adaptation to transform a secret message to a non-sensitive target speech signal, and then, the scrambled speech signal is an intelligible signal. The residual intelligibility is extremely low and it is appropriate to transmit secure speech signals. On the other hand, in a steganographic model, the adapted speech signal is hidden into a host signal by using indirect substitution or direct substitution. In the first case, the scheme is known as Efficient Wavelet Masking (EWM), and in the second case, it is known as improved-EWM (iEWM). While EWM demonstrated to be highly statistical transparent, the second one, iEWM, demonstrated to be highly robust against signal manipulations. Finally, with the purpose to transmit secure speech signals in real-time operation, a hardware-based scheme is proposedEsta tesis presenta dos métodos de comunicación encubierta de señales de voz utilizando un concepto bio-inspirado, conocido como la “habilidad de adaptación de señales de voz”. El modelo de criptografía utiliza la adaptación para transformar un mensaje secreto a una señal de voz no confidencial, obteniendo una señal de voz encriptada legible. Este método es apropiado para transmitir señales de voz seguras porque en la señal encriptada no quedan rastros del mensaje secreto original. En el caso de esteganografía, la señal de voz adaptada se oculta en una señal de voz huésped, utilizando sustitución directa o indirecta. En el primer caso el esquema se denomina EWM y en el segundo caso iEWM. EWM demostró ser altamente transparente, mientras que iEWM demostró ser altamente robusto contra manipulaciones de señal. Finalmente, con el propósito de transmitir señales de voz seguras en tiempo real, se propone un esquema para dispositivos hardware

    New Digital Audio Watermarking Algorithms for Copyright Protection

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    This thesis investigates the development of digital audio watermarking in addressing issues such as copyright protection. Over the past two decades, many digital watermarking algorithms have been developed, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The main aim of this thesis was to develop a new watermarking algorithm within an existing Fast Fourier Transform framework. This resulted in the development of a Complex Spectrum Phase Evolution based watermarking algorithm. In this new implementation, the embedding positions were generated dynamically thereby rendering it more difficult for an attacker to remove, and watermark information was embedded by manipulation of the spectral components in the time domain thereby reducing any audible distortion. Further improvements were attained when the embedding criteria was based on bin location comparison instead of magnitude, thereby rendering it more robust against those attacks that interfere with the spectral magnitudes. However, it was discovered that this new audio watermarking algorithm has some disadvantages such as a relatively low capacity and a non-consistent robustness for different audio files. Therefore, a further aim of this thesis was to improve the algorithm from a different perspective. Improvements were investigated using an Singular Value Decomposition framework wherein a novel observation was discovered. Furthermore, a psychoacoustic model was incorporated to suppress any audible distortion. This resulted in a watermarking algorithm which achieved a higher capacity and a more consistent robustness. The overall result was that two new digital audio watermarking algorithms were developed which were complementary in their performance thereby opening more opportunities for further research

    Machine Learning in Sensors and Imaging

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    Machine learning is extending its applications in various fields, such as image processing, the Internet of Things, user interface, big data, manufacturing, management, etc. As data are required to build machine learning networks, sensors are one of the most important technologies. In addition, machine learning networks can contribute to the improvement in sensor performance and the creation of new sensor applications. This Special Issue addresses all types of machine learning applications related to sensors and imaging. It covers computer vision-based control, activity recognition, fuzzy label classification, failure classification, motor temperature estimation, the camera calibration of intelligent vehicles, error detection, color prior model, compressive sensing, wildfire risk assessment, shelf auditing, forest-growing stem volume estimation, road management, image denoising, and touchscreens

    Waveform design and processing techniques in OFDM radar

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    Includes bibliographical referencesWith the advent of powerful digital hardware, software defined radio and radar have become an active area of research and development. This in turn has given rise to many new research directions in the radar community, which were previously not comprehensible. One such direction is the recently investigated OFDM radar, which uses OFDM waveforms instead of the classic linear frequency mod- ulated waveforms. Being a wideband signal, the OFDM symbol offers spectral efficiency along with improved range resolution, two enticing characteristics for radar. Historically a communication signal, OFDM is a special form of multi- carrier modulation, where a single data stream is transmitted over a number of lower rate carriers. The information is conveyed via sets of complex phase codes modulating the phase of the carriers. At the receiver, a demodulation stage estimates the transmitted phase codes and the information in the form of binary words is finally retrieved. In radar, the primary goal is to detect the presence of targets and possibly estimate some of their features through measurable quantities, e.g. range, Doppler, etc. Yet, being a young waveform in radar, more understanding is required to turn it into a standard radar waveform. Our goal, with this thesis, is to mature our comprehension of OFDM for radar and contribute to the realm of OFDM radar. First, we develop two processing alternatives for the case of a train of wideband OFDM pulses. In this, our first so-called time domain solution consists in applying a matched filter to compress the received echoes in the fast time before applying a fast Fourier transform in the slow time to form the range Doppler image. We motivate this approach after demonstrating that short OFDM pulses are Doppler tolerant. The merit of this approach is to conserve existing radar architectures while operating OFDM waveforms. The second so-called frequency domain solution that we propose is inspired from communication engineering research since the received echoes are tumbled in the frequency domain. After several manipulations, the range Doppler image is formed. We explain how this approach allows to retrieve an estimate of the unambiguous radial velocity, and propose two methods for that. The first method requires the use of identical sequence (IS) for the phase codes and is, as such, binding, while the other method works irrespective of the phase codes. Like the previous technique, this processing solution accommodates high Doppler frequencies and the degradation in the range Doppler image is negligible provided that the spacing between consecutive subcarriers is sufficient. Unfortunately, it suffers from the issue of intersymbol interference (ISI). After observing that both solutions provide the same processing gain, we clarify the constraints that shall apply to the OFDM signals in either of these solutions. In the first solution, special care has been employed to design OFDM pulses with low peak-to-mean power ratio (PMEPR) and low sidelobe level in the autocorrelation function. In the second solution, on the other hand, only the constraint of low PMEPR applies since the sidelobes of the scatterer characteristic function in the range Doppler image are Fourier based. Then, we develop a waveform-processing concept for OFDM based stepped frequency waveforms. This approach is intended for high resolution radar with improved low probability of detection (LPD) characteristics, as we propose to employ a frequency hopping scheme from pulse to pulse other than the conventional linear one. In the same way we treated our second alternative earlier, we derive our high range resolution processing in matrix terms and assess the degradation caused by high Doppler on the range profile. We propose using a bank of range migration filters to retrieve the radial velocity of the scatterer and realise that the issue of classical ambiguity in Doppler can be alleviated provided that the relative bandwidth, i.e. the total bandwidth covered by the train of pulses divided by the carrier frequency, is chosen carefully. After discussing a deterministic artefact caused by frequency hopping and the means to reduce it at the waveform design or processing level, we discuss the benefit offered by our concept in comparison to other standard wideband methods and emphasize on its LPD characteristics at the waveform and pulse level. In our subsequent analysis, we investigate genetic algorithm (GA) based techniques to finetune OFDM pulses in terms of radar requirements viz., low PMEPR only or low PMEPR and low sidelobe level together, as evoked earlier. To motivate the use of genetic algorithms, we establish that existing techniques are not exible in terms of the OFDM structure (the assumption that all carriers are present is always made). Besides, the use of advanced objective functions suited to particular configurations (e.g. low sidelobe level in proximity of the main autocorrelation peak) as well as the combination of multiple objective functions can be done elegantly with GA based techniques. To justify that solely phase codes are used for our optimisation(s), we stress that the weights applied to the carriers composing the OFDM signal can be spared to cope with other radar related challenges and we give an example with a case of enhanced detection. Next, we develop a technique where we exploit the instantaneous wideband trans- mission to characterise the type of the canonical scatterers that compose a target. Our idea is based on the well-established results from the geometrical theory of diffraction (GTD), where the scattered energy varies with frequency. We present the problem related to ISI, stress the need to design the transmitted pulse so as to reduce this risk and suggest having prior knowledge over the scatterers relative positions. Subsequently, we develop a performance analysis to assess the behaviour of our technique in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). Then, we demonstrate the merit of integrating over several pulses to improve the characterisation rate of the scatterers. Because the scattering centres of a target resonate variably at different frequencies, frequency diversity is another enticing property which can be used to enhance the sensing performance. Here, we exploit this element of diversity to improve the classification function. We develop a technique where the classification takes place at the waveform design when few targets are present. In our case study, we have three simple targets. Each is composed of perfectly electrically conducting spheres for which we have exact models of the scattered field. We develop a GA based search to find optimal OFDM symbols that best discriminate one target against any other. Thereafter, the OFDM pulse used for probing the target in the scene is constructed by stacking the resulting symbols in time. After discussing the problem of finding the best frequency window to sense the target, we develop a performance analysis where our figure of merit is the overall probability of correct classification. Again, we prove the merit of integrating over several pulses to reach classification rates above 95%. In turn, this study opens onto new challenges in the realm of OFDM radar. We leave for future research the demonstration of the practical applicability of our novel concepts and mention manifold research axes, viz., a signal processing axis that would include methods to cope with inter symbol interference, range migration issues, methods to raise the ambiguity in Doppler when several echoes from distinct scatterers overlap in the case of our frequency domain processing solutions; an algorithmic axis that would concern the heuristic techniques employed in the design of our OFDM pulses. We foresee that further tuning might help speeding up our GA based algorithms and we expect that constrained multi- objective optimisation GA (MOO-GA) based techniques shall benefit the OFDM pulse design problem in radar. A system design axis that would account for the hardware components' behaviours, when possible, directly at the waveform design stage and would include implementation of the OFDM radar system

    Advances in Image Processing, Analysis and Recognition Technology

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    For many decades, researchers have been trying to make computers’ analysis of images as effective as the system of human vision is. For this purpose, many algorithms and systems have previously been created. The whole process covers various stages, including image processing, representation and recognition. The results of this work can be applied to many computer-assisted areas of everyday life. They improve particular activities and provide handy tools, which are sometimes only for entertainment, but quite often, they significantly increase our safety. In fact, the practical implementation of image processing algorithms is particularly wide. Moreover, the rapid growth of computational complexity and computer efficiency has allowed for the development of more sophisticated and effective algorithms and tools. Although significant progress has been made so far, many issues still remain, resulting in the need for the development of novel approaches

    18th IEEE Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems: Proceedings

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    Proceedings of the 18th IEEE Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems, which took place in Dresden, Germany, 26 – 28 May 2010.:Welcome Address ........................ Page I Table of Contents ........................ Page III Symposium Committees .............. Page IV Special Thanks ............................. Page V Conference program (incl. page numbers of papers) ................... Page VI Conference papers Invited talks ................................ Page 1 Regular Papers ........................... Page 14 Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 ......... Page 15 Thursday, May 27th, 2010 .......... Page 110 Friday, May 28th, 2010 ............... Page 210 Author index ............................... Page XII

    The 8th International Conference on Time Series and Forecasting

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    The aim of ITISE 2022 is to create a friendly environment that could lead to the establishment or strengthening of scientific collaborations and exchanges among attendees. Therefore, ITISE 2022 is soliciting high-quality original research papers (including significant works-in-progress) on any aspect time series analysis and forecasting, in order to motivating the generation and use of new knowledge, computational techniques and methods on forecasting in a wide range of fields

    Responsible machine learning: supporting privacy preservation and normative alignment with multi-agent simulation

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    This dissertation aims to advance responsible machine learning through multi-agent simulation (MAS). I introduce and demonstrate an open source, multi-domain discrete event simulation framework and use it to: (1) improve state-of-the-art privacy-preserving federated learning and (2) construct a novel method for normatively-aligned learning from synthetic negative examples. Due to their complexity and capacity, the training of modern machine learning (ML) models can require vast user-collected data sets. The current formulation of federated learning arose in 2016 after repeated exposure of sensitive user information from centralized data stores where mobile and wearable training data was aggregated. Privacy-preserving federated learning (PPFL) soon added stochastic and cryptographic layers to protect against additional vectors of data exposure. Recent state of the art protocols have combined differential privacy (DP) and secure multiparty computation (MPC) to keep client training data set parameters private from an ``honest but curious'' server which is legitimately involved in the learning process, but attempting to infer information it should not have. Investigation of PPFL can be cost prohibitive if each iteration of a proposed experimental protocol is distributed to virtual computational nodes geolocated around the world. It can also be inaccurate when locally simulated without concern for client parallelism, accurate timekeeping, or computation and communication loads. In this work, a recent PPFL protocol is instantiated as a single-threaded MAS to show that its model accuracy, deployed parallel running time, and resistance to inference of client model parameters can be inexpensively evaluated. The protocol is then extended using oblivious distributed differential privacy to a new state of the art secure against attacks of collusion among all except one participant, with an empirical demonstration that the new protocol improves privacy with no loss of accuracy to the final model. State of the art reinforcement learning (RL) is also increasingly complex and hard to interpret, such that a sequence of individually innocuous actions may produce an unexpectedly harmful result. Safe RL seeks to avoid these results through techniques like reward variance reduction, error state prediction, or constrained exploration of the state-action space. Development of the field has been heavily influenced by robotics and finance, and thus it is primarily concerned with physical failures like a helicopter crash or a robot-human workplace collision, or monetary failures like the depletion of an investment account. The related field of Normative RL is concerned with obeying the behavioral expectations of a broad human population, like respecting personal space or not sneaking up behind people. Because normative behavior often implicates safety, for example the assumption that an autonomous navigation robot will not walk through a human to reach its goal more quickly, there is significant overlap between the two areas. There are problem domains not easily addressed by current approaches in safe or normative RL, where the undesired behavior is subtle, violates legal or ethical rather than physical or monetary constraints, and may be composed of individually-normative actions. In this work, I consider an intelligent stock trading agent that maximizes profit but may inadvertently learn ``spoofing'', a form of illegal market manipulation that can be difficult to detect. Using a financial market based on MAS, I safely coerce a variety of spoofing behaviors, learn to distinguish them from other profit-driven strategies, and carefully analyze the empirical results. I then demonstrate how this spoofing recognizer can be used as a normative guide to train an intelligent trading agent that will generate positive returns while avoiding spoofing behaviors, even if their adoption would increase short-term profits. I believe this contribution to normative RL, of deriving an method for normative alignment from synthetic non-normative action sequences, should generalize to many other problem domains.Ph.D

    Tracking of Human Motion over Time

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