Successive structuring of source coding algorithms for data fusion, buffering, and distribution in networks

Supervised by Gregory W. Wornell.Also issued as Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-165).(cont.) We also explore the interactions between source coding and queue management in problems of buffering and distributing distortion-tolerant data. We formulate a general queuing model relevant to numerous communication scenarios, and develop a bound on the performance of any algorithm. We design an adaptive buffer-control algorithm for use in dynamic environments and under finite memory limitations; its performance closely approximates the bound. Our design uses multiresolution source codes that exploit the data's distortion-tolerance in minimizing end-to-end distortion. Compared to traditional approaches, the performance gains of the adaptive algorithm are significant - improving distortion, delay, and overall system robustness.by Stark Christiaan Draper

REGION-BASED ADAPTIVE DISTRIBUTED VIDEO CODING CODEC

The recently developed Distributed Video Coding (DVC) is typically suitable for the applications where the conventional video coding is not feasible because of its inherent high-complexity encoding. Examples include video surveillance usmg wireless/wired video sensor network and applications using mobile cameras etc. With DVC, the complexity is shifted from the encoder to the decoder. The practical application of DVC is referred to as Wyner-Ziv video coding (WZ) where an estimate of the original frame called "side information" is generated using motion compensation at the decoder. The compression is achieved by sending only that extra information that is needed to correct this estimation. An error-correcting code is used with the assumption that the estimate is a noisy version of the original frame and the rate needed is certain amount of the parity bits. The side information is assumed to have become available at the decoder through a virtual channel. Due to the limitation of compensation method, the predicted frame, or the side information, is expected to have varying degrees of success. These limitations stem from locationspecific non-stationary estimation noise. In order to avoid these, the conventional video coders, like MPEG, make use of frame partitioning to allocate optimum coder for each partition and hence achieve better rate-distortion performance. The same, however, has not been used in DVC as it increases the encoder complexity. This work proposes partitioning the considered frame into many coding units (region) where each unit is encoded differently. This partitioning is, however, done at the decoder while generating the side-information and the region map is sent over to encoder at very little rate penalty. The partitioning allows allocation of appropriate DVC coding parameters (virtual channel, rate, and quantizer) to each region. The resulting regions map is compressed by employing quadtree algorithm and communicated to the encoder via the feedback channel. The rate control in DVC is performed by channel coding techniques (turbo codes, LDPC, etc.). The performance of the channel code depends heavily on the accuracy of virtual channel model that models estimation error for each region. In this work, a turbo code has been used and an adaptive WZ DVC is designed both in transform domain and in pixel domain. The transform domain WZ video coding (TDWZ) has distinct superior performance as compared to the normal Pixel Domain Wyner-Ziv (PDWZ), since it exploits the ' spatial redundancy during the encoding. The performance evaluations show that the proposed system is superior to the existing distributed video coding solutions. Although the, proposed system requires extra bits representing the "regions map" to be transmitted, fuut still the rate gain is noticeable and it outperforms the state-of-the-art frame based DVC by 0.6-1.9 dB. The feedback channel (FC) has the role to adapt the bit rate to the changing ' statistics between the side infonmation and the frame to be encoded. In the unidirectional scenario, the encoder must perform the rate control. To correctly estimate the rate, the encoder must calculate typical side information. However, the rate cannot be exactly calculated at the encoder, instead it can only be estimated. This work also prbposes a feedback-free region-based adaptive DVC solution in pixel domain based on machine learning approach to estimate the side information. Although the performance evaluations show rate-penalty but it is acceptable considering the simplicity of the proposed algorithm. vii

Optimal information storage : nonsequential sources and neural channels

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2006.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.MIT Institute Archives copy: pages 101-163 bound in reverse order.Includes bibliographical references (p. 141-163).Information storage and retrieval systems are communication systems from the present to the future and fall naturally into the framework of information theory. The goal of information storage is to preserve as much signal fidelity under resource constraints as possible. The information storage theorem delineates average fidelity and average resource values that are achievable and those that are not. Moreover, observable properties of optimal information storage systems and the robustness of optimal systems to parameter mismatch may be determined. In this thesis, we study the physical properties of a neural information storage channel and also the fundamental bounds on the storage of sources that have nonsequential semantics. Experimental investigations have revealed that synapses in the mammalian brain possess unexpected properties. Adopting the optimization approach to biology, we cast the brain as an optimal information storage system and propose a theoretical framework that accounts for many of these physical properties. Based on previous experimental and theoretical work, we use volume as a limited resource and utilize the empirical relationship between volume anrid synaptic weight.(cont.) Our scientific hypotheses are based on maximizing information storage capacity per unit cost. We use properties of the capacity-cost function, e-capacity cost approximations, and measure matching to develop optimization principles. We find that capacity-achieving input distributions not only explain existing experimental measurements but also make non-trivial predictions about the physical structure of the brain. Numerous information storage applications have semantics such that the order of source elements is irrelevant, so the source sequence can be treated as a multiset. We formulate fidelity criteria that consider asymptotically large multisets and give conclusive, but trivialized, results in rate distortion theory. For fidelity criteria that consider fixed-size multisets. we give some conclusive results in high-rate quantization theory, low-rate quantization. and rate distortion theory. We also provide bounds on the rate-distortion function for other nonsequential fidelity criteria problems. System resource consumption can be significantly reduced by recognizing the correct invariance properties and semantics of the information storage task at hand.by Lav R. Varshney.S.M

REGION-BASED ADAPTIVE DISTRIBUTED VIDEO CODING CODEC

The recently developed Distributed Video Coding (DVC) is typically suitable for the applications where the conventional video coding is not feasible because of its inherent high-complexity encoding. Examples include video surveillance usmg wireless/wired video sensor network and applications using mobile cameras etc. With DVC, the complexity is shifted from the encoder to the decoder. The practical application of DVC is referred to as Wyner-Ziv video coding (WZ) where an estimate of the original frame called "side information" is generated using motion compensation at the decoder. The compression is achieved by sending only that extra information that is needed to correct this estimation. An error-correcting code is used with the assumption that the estimate is a noisy version of the original frame and the rate needed is certain amount of the parity bits. The side information is assumed to have become available at the decoder through a virtual channel. Due to the limitation of compensation method, the predicted frame, or the side information, is expected to have varying degrees of success. These limitations stem from locationspecific non-stationary estimation noise. In order to avoid these, the conventional video coders, like MPEG, make use of frame partitioning to allocate optimum coder for each partition and hence achieve better rate-distortion performance. The same, however, has not been used in DVC as it increases the encoder complexity. This work proposes partitioning the considered frame into many coding units (region) where each unit is encoded differently. This partitioning is, however, done at the decoder while generating the side-information and the region map is sent over to encoder at very little rate penalty. The partitioning allows allocation of appropriate DVC coding parameters (virtual channel, rate, and quantizer) to each region. The resulting regions map is compressed by employing quadtree algorithm and communicated to the encoder via the feedback channel. The rate control in DVC is performed by channel coding techniques (turbo codes, LDPC, etc.). The performance of the channel code depends heavily on the accuracy of virtual channel model that models estimation error for each region. In this work, a turbo code has been used and an adaptive WZ DVC is designed both in transform domain and in pixel domain. The transform domain WZ video coding (TDWZ) has distinct superior performance as compared to the normal Pixel Domain Wyner-Ziv (PDWZ), since it exploits the ' spatial redundancy during the encoding. The performance evaluations show that the proposed system is superior to the existing distributed video coding solutions. Although the, proposed system requires extra bits representing the "regions map" to be transmitted, fuut still the rate gain is noticeable and it outperforms the state-of-the-art frame based DVC by 0.6-1.9 dB. The feedback channel (FC) has the role to adapt the bit rate to the changing ' statistics between the side infonmation and the frame to be encoded. In the unidirectional scenario, the encoder must perform the rate control. To correctly estimate the rate, the encoder must calculate typical side information. However, the rate cannot be exactly calculated at the encoder, instead it can only be estimated. This work also prbposes a feedback-free region-based adaptive DVC solution in pixel domain based on machine learning approach to estimate the side information. Although the performance evaluations show rate-penalty but it is acceptable considering the simplicity of the proposed algorithm. vii

Scalable Front End Designs for Communication and Learning

In this work we provide three examples of estimation/detection problems, for which customizing the Front End to the specific application makes the system more efficient and scalable. The three problems we consider are all classical, but face new scalability challenges. This introduces additional constraints, accounting for which results in front end designs that are very distinct from the conventional approaches. The first two case studies pertain to the canonical problems of synchronization and equalization for communication links. As the system bandwidths scale, challenges arise due to the limiting resolution of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). We discuss system designs that react to this bottleneck by drastically relaxing the precision requirements of the front end and correspondingly modifying the back end algorithms using Bayesian principles. The third problem we discuss belongs to the field of computer vision. Inspired by the research in neuroscience about the mammalian visual system, we redesign the front end of a machine vision system to be neuro-mimetic, followed by layers of unsupervised learning using simple k-means clustering. This results in a framework that is intuitive, more computationally efficient compared to the approach of supervised deep networks, and amenable to the increasing availability of large amounts of unlabeled data. We first consider the problem of blind carrier phase and frequency synchronization in order to obtain insight into the performance limitations imposed by severe quantization constraints. We adopt a mixed signal analog front end that coarsely quantizes the phase and employs a digitally controlled feedback that applies a phase shift prior to the ADC, this acts as a controllable dither signal and aids in the estimation process. We propose a control policy for the feedback and show that combined with blind Bayesian algorithms, it results in excellent performance, close to that of an unquantized system.Next, we take up the problem of channel equalization with severe limits on the number of slicers available for the ADC. We find that the standard flash ADC architecture can be highly sub-optimal in the presence of such constraints. Hence we explore a ``space-time'' generalization of the flash architecture by allowing a fixed numberof slicers to be dispersed in time (sampling phase) as well as space (i.e., amplitude). We show that optimizing the slicer locations, conditioned on the channel, results in significant gains in the bit error rate (BER) performance. Finally, we explore alternative ways of learning convolutionalnets for machine vision, making it easier to interpret and simpler to implement than currently used purely supervised nets. In particular, we investigate a framework that combines a neuro-mimetic front end (designed in collaboration with the neuroscientists from the psychology department at UCSB) together with unsupervised feature extraction based on clustering. Supervised classification, using a generic support vector machine (SVM), is applied at the end.We obtain competitive classification results on standard image databases, beating the state of the art for NORB (uniform-normalized) and approaching it for MNIST

Adaptive Fractal and Wavelet Image Denoising

The need for image enhancement and restoration is encountered in many practical applications. For instance, distortion due to additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) can be caused by poor quality image acquisition, images observed in a noisy environment or noise inherent in communication channels. In this thesis, image denoising is investigated. After reviewing standard image denoising methods as applied in the spatial, frequency and wavelet domains of the noisy image, the thesis embarks on the endeavor of developing and experimenting with new image denoising methods based on fractal and wavelet transforms. In particular, three new image denoising methods are proposed: context-based wavelet thresholding, predictive fractal image denoising and fractal-wavelet image denoising. The proposed context-based thresholding strategy adopts localized hard and soft thresholding operators which take in consideration the content of an immediate neighborhood of a wavelet coefficient before thresholding it. The two fractal-based predictive schemes are based on a simple yet effective algorithm for estimating the fractal code of the original noise-free image from the noisy one. From this predicted code, one can then reconstruct a fractally denoised estimate of the original image. This fractal-based denoising algorithm can be applied in the pixel and the wavelet domains of the noisy image using standard fractal and fractal-wavelet schemes, respectively. Furthermore, the cycle spinning idea was implemented in order to enhance the quality of the fractally denoised estimates. Experimental results show that the proposed image denoising methods are competitive, or sometimes even compare favorably with the existing image denoising techniques reviewed in the thesis. This work broadens the application scope of fractal transforms, which have been used mainly for image coding and compression purposes

Unsupervised landmark discovery via self-training correspondence

Object parts, also known as landmarks, convey information about an object’s shape and spatial configuration in 3D space, especially for deformable objects. The goal of landmark detection is to have a model that, for a particular object instance, can estimate the locations of its parts. Research in this field is mainly driven by supervised approaches, where a sufficient amount of human-annotated data is available. As annotating landmarks for all objects is impractical, this thesis focuses on learning landmark detectors without supervision. Despite good performance on limited scenarios (objects showcasing minor rigid deformation), unsupervised landmark discovery mostly remains an open problem. Existing work fails to capture semantic landmarks, i.e. points similar to the ones assigned by human annotators and may not generalise well to highly articulated objects like the human body, complicated backgrounds or large viewpoint variations. In this thesis, we propose a novel self-training framework for the discovery of unsupervised landmarks. Contrary to existing methods that build on auxiliary tasks such as image generation or equivariance, we depart from generic keypoints and train a landmark detector and descriptor to improve itself, tuning the keypoints into distinctive landmarks. We propose an iterative algorithm that alternates between producing new pseudo-labels through feature clustering and learning distinctive features for each pseudo-class through contrastive learning. Our detector can discover highly semantic landmarks, that are more flexible in terms of capturing large viewpoint changes and out-of-plane rotations (3D rotations). New state-of-the-art performance is achieved in multiple challenging datasets

Unsupervised landmark discovery via self-training correspondence

Object parts, also known as landmarks, convey information about an object’s shape and spatial configuration in 3D space, especially for deformable objects. The goal of landmark detection is to have a model that, for a particular object instance, can estimate the locations of its parts. Research in this field is mainly driven by supervised approaches, where a sufficient amount of human-annotated data is available. As annotating landmarks for all objects is impractical, this thesis focuses on learning landmark detectors without supervision. Despite good performance on limited scenarios (objects showcasing minor rigid deformation), unsupervised landmark discovery mostly remains an open problem. Existing work fails to capture semantic landmarks, i.e. points similar to the ones assigned by human annotators and may not generalise well to highly articulated objects like the human body, complicated backgrounds or large viewpoint variations. In this thesis, we propose a novel self-training framework for the discovery of unsupervised landmarks. Contrary to existing methods that build on auxiliary tasks such as image generation or equivariance, we depart from generic keypoints and train a landmark detector and descriptor to improve itself, tuning the keypoints into distinctive landmarks. We propose an iterative algorithm that alternates between producing new pseudo-labels through feature clustering and learning distinctive features for each pseudo-class through contrastive learning. Our detector can discover highly semantic landmarks, that are more flexible in terms of capturing large viewpoint changes and out-of-plane rotations (3D rotations). New state-of-the-art performance is achieved in multiple challenging datasets

Recent Advances in Signal Processing

The signal processing task is a very critical issue in the majority of new technological inventions and challenges in a variety of applications in both science and engineering fields. Classical signal processing techniques have largely worked with mathematical models that are linear, local, stationary, and Gaussian. They have always favored closed-form tractability over real-world accuracy. These constraints were imposed by the lack of powerful computing tools. During the last few decades, signal processing theories, developments, and applications have matured rapidly and now include tools from many areas of mathematics, computer science, physics, and engineering. This book is targeted primarily toward both students and researchers who want to be exposed to a wide variety of signal processing techniques and algorithms. It includes 27 chapters that can be categorized into five different areas depending on the application at hand. These five categories are ordered to address image processing, speech processing, communication systems, time-series analysis, and educational packages respectively. The book has the advantage of providing a collection of applications that are completely independent and self-contained; thus, the interested reader can choose any chapter and skip to another without losing continuity