GEZGIN: A case study of a real-time image processing subsystem for micro-satellites

GEZGIN is a real-time image processing subsystem, developed as an R&D payload for BILSAT-1, the first earth observing micro-satellite of Turkey. The main functionality of GEZGIN is to compress in real-time multi-spectral images coming concurrently from the 4-band multi-spectral imager on BILSAT-1, using JPEG2000 Image Compression algorithm. The mission definition of BILSAT-1 imposes a 5.5 seconds interval constraint between two consecutive multi-spectral images with 20% overlap. GEZGIN fullfills this mission requirement by exploiting the parallelism among image processing units and assigning compute intensive tasks to dedicated hardware. The architecture of GEZGIN is highly integrated and fully reconfigurable allowing for the upgrade of all processing units in orbit. Hence it maintains flexibility and robustness against failures which are crucial properties for space applications. GEZGIN is built at low cost using completely "commercial-off-the-sheff" (COTS) components and having performed well in all the flight readiness tests, has been succesfully integrated on BILSAT-1. It is currently undergoing orbital tests

Implementation of an enhanced fixed point Variable Bit-Rate MELP vocoder on TMS320C549

In this paper, a fixed point Variable Bit-Rate (VBR) Mixed Excitation Linear Predictive Coding (MELP(TM)) vocoder is presented. The VBR-MELP vocoder is also implemented on a TMS320C54x and it achieves virtually indistinguishable federal standard MELP quality at bit-rates between 1.0 to 1.6 kb/s. The backbone of VBR-MELP vocoder is similar to that of federal standard MELP. It utilizes a novel sub-band based voice activity detector in the back-end of encoder to discriminate background noise from speech activity. Since proposed detector uses only parameters extracted in the encoder, its computational complexity is very low

Consociationalism under examination: Is consociationalism the optimal multiculturalist approach for Turkey?

WOS: 000524326100001Some scholars maintain that the Republic of Turkey should construct a consociational model to manage its ethno-cultural diversity. This article suggests consociationalism is not the optimal multiculturalist approach for Turkey, where there is some degree of interethnic moderation between ethnic Kurds and Turks at the grassroots level. in the presence of this mass-based moderation, a consociational formula is unlikely to provide Turkish political leaders with political incentives that urge them to cooperate and enter into consociational power-sharing arrangements with their Kurdish counterparts. This renders consociational power-sharing arrangements difficult to promote or enforce in Turkey. in the absence of such incentives, any multicultural reform of the consociational formula would not be sustainable in Turkey. There would simply not be enough popular support for such reforms. There are some electoral strategies that offer both majority and minority leaders political incentives to move toward the moderate middle, form interethnic coalitions, foster interculturalism, and increase the number of intercultural citizens. These strategies are offered by centripetalism, another multiculturalist approach to managing ethno-cultural diversity