The use of vascular intersection aberration as one of the signs when monitoring and diagnosing diabetic retinopathy from retina fundus images (FIs) has been widely reported in the literature. In this paper, a new hybrid approach called the combined cross-point number (CCN) method able to detect the vascular bifurcation and intersection points in FIs is proposed. The CCN method makes use of two vascular intersection detection techniques, namely the modified cross-point number (MCN) method and the simple cross-point number (SCN) method. Our proposed approach was tested on images obtained from two different and publicly available fundus image databases. The results show a very high precision, accuracy, sensitivity and low false rate in detecting both bifurcation and crossover points compared with both the MCN and the SCN methods.

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image processing involves a two dimensional (2-D) Fourier Transform (FT) and the spectrum shape introduces high intensity sidelobes. These sidelobes may severely distort the image. Apodization technique can decrease the sidelobes level while preserving the image resolution. However, in Ultra wideband (UWB) SAR imaging, we have to reduce both orthogonal and non-orthogonal sidelobes. In this paper, a new linear window function has been presented based on analysis of different linear and non-linear apodization techniques. This new linear method controls both orthogonal and non-orthogonal sidelobes better than other conventional window functions. This method has been applied and verified with a real SAR image.

In this paper, we investigate the average symbol error probability (SEP) of fixed decode-and-forward relay networks over independent but not identically distributed Nakagami-m fading channels. We have derived closed form expression of SEP for general rectangular quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) under relay selection scheme where only the best relay forwards message from the source to the destination. The expressions are in terms of hypergeometric series which can be efficiently numerically evaluated. The numerical results are validated with Monte-Carlo simulations.

The use of remote labs in undergraduate courses has been reported in literature several times since the mid 90's. Nevertheless, very few articles present results about the learning gains obtained by students using them, especially with a large number of students, thus suggesting a lack of data concerning their pedagogical effectiveness. This paper addresses such a gap by presenting some preliminary results concerning the use of a remote laboratory, known as VISIR, in a large undergraduate course on Applied Physics, with over 500 students enrolled.

Pakistan is among some countries which has a lot of potential to produce electricity. The country is geographically very rich in terms of various renewable resources which are low costing to produce electricity and at the same time more environment friendly. But still from last 15 years Pakistan has a series of crises in power sector and there is a shortfall because electricity demand is growing day by day and the resources to produce electricity are not used efficiently.

This study covers how the country is producing electricity from different available resources, furthermore to address how to reduce shortfall using renewable resources. The main parameters covered by this study are electricity production and its consumption, and installed capacity from different power sources.

Currently there are 81 different Power plants with installed capacity 24857 MW of electricity and some more power generating projects are in consideration in future to increase electricity production in the country.  Production units are shown in terms of bar charts which compares installed capacity of all power plants. Annual production data of different power plants and their generation history is also shown and explained in tables.

Furthermore in our study, reasons of existing shortfall are explained and renewable resources like wind, hydel and solar potential of the country is specified, which will help to reduce existing shortfall. At the end, it is concluded that renewable resources importance is realizing in the country with time, as their contribution towards electricity generation is increasing, and are more beneficial, sustainable, economical and long lasting.

Remote laboratories are an emergent technological and pedagogical tool at all education levels, and their widespread use is an important part of their own improvement and evolution. This paper describes several issues encountered on laboratorial classes, on higher education courses, when using remote laboratories based on PXI systems, either using the VISIR system or an alternate in-house solution. Three main issues are presented and explained, all reported by teachers, that gave support to students' use of remote laboratories. The first issue deals with the need to allow students to select the actual place where an ammeter is to be inserted on electric circuits, even incorrectly, therefore emulating real-world difficulties. The second one deals with problems with timing when several measurements are required at short intervals, as in the discharge cycle of a capacitor. In addition, the last issue deals with the use of a multimeter in dc mode when reading ac values, a use that collides with the lab settings. All scenarios are presented and discussed, including the solution found for each case. The conclusion derived from the described work is that the remote laboratories area is an expanding field, where practical use leads to improvement and evolution of the available solutions, requiring a strict cooperation and information-sharing between all actors, i.e., developers, teachers, and students.

The Independent Component Analysis with Reference (ICA R) also called as constrained ICA (cICA) extracts only the desired source signals from the mixture of source signals by incorporating some prior information into the separation process. To overcome the problem of designing the reference signal when there is no prior information about the desired signal in the cICA, an improved method is proposed to use a different speech signal generated by the same physical source. The cICA is extended to use Bessel coefficients of the observed signals and the reference signal for processing as they converge faster than the other transformations. Since the Bessel functions provide the desired properties, efficient in representing speech signals, less memory storage they have been exploited in speech processing [1]. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.

This article proposes several improvements to an adaptive fingerprint enhancement method that is based on contextual filtering. The term adaptive implies that parameters of the method are automatically adjusted based on the input fingerprint image. Five processing blocks comprise the adaptive fingerprint enhancement method, where four of these blocks are updated in our proposed system. Hence, the proposed overall system is novel. The four updated processing blocks are: 1) preprocessing; 2) global analysis; 3) local analysis; and 4) matched filtering. In the preprocessing and local analysis blocks, a nonlinear dynamic range adjustment method is used. In the global analysis and matched filtering blocks, different forms of order statistical filters are applied. These processing blocks yield an improved and new adaptive fingerprint image processing method. The performance of the updated processing blocks is presented in the evaluation part of this paper. The algorithm is evaluated toward the NIST developed NBIS software for fingerprint recognition on FVC databases.

Long delays and sparseness characterize impulse responses in telecommunication networks and a vast number of solutions for network echo cancellation have been proposed over the years. In this paper, an approach for detecting dispersive regions of a sparse impulse response and a proportionate normalized least mean square (PNLMS)-based selective updating approach are combined with an adaptive double-talk detector to form a complete solution for echo cancellation. The proposed solution has low computational complexity and is targeted for systems equipped with external memory.

In this paper an audio processing solution for video conference based aerobics is presented. The proposed solution leaves the workout music unaltered by separating it from the speech and processing each signal separately. The speech signal processing is also performed at a lower sample rate, which saves computational power. Real time evaluation of the system shows that high quality music as well as a good two-way communication is maintained during the aerobic session.

Conformal antennas, which assumes the shape of the platform, have several advantages, like reduced weight and space; aerodynamic design and increased field of view. We are interested in detection of moving ground targets with air-borne radar with three antenna geometries: faceted or smooth vertical half-cylinder and plane forward-looking. We study important clutter properties for suppressing the clutter with STAP (Space-Time Adaptive Processing) and find that the subarray division is more important than the antenna element positions, that the faceted and smooth antennas give similar clutter properties and that all three geometries have better clutter properties the smaller the subarrays are. The largest tested subarrays are probably useless for clutter suppression.

Conformal antennas, which assume the shape of the platform, have several advantages; like reduced weight and space, aerodynamic design and increased field of view. We are interested in detection of moving ground targets with air-borne radar with faceted or smooth vertical half-cylinder or planar antennas with different subarray sizes. We simulate radar systems and study clutter properties which are important for suppressing the clutter with STAP (Space-Time Adaptive Processing), properties by which we can compare the antennas. We use old analysis tools and propose some new which are easy to interpret and draw conclusions from. We find that the faceted and smooth half-cylinder antennas have no significant differences in clutter suppression performance. The plane antenna has poorer performance. The subarray division is more important than the antenna geometry. The number of antenna channels is related to the clutter rank and the clutter fraction of the signal space

Detection and localization of ground targets in the region between the transmitter and the receiver in bistatic radar is difficult due to strong interference from surface clutter and the direct transmitter signal. We have simulated fast-time (using channels of an array antenna and range bins) and slow-time (antenna channels and radar pulses) STAP (Space Time Adaptive Processing) and find that fast-time gives better interference suppression in this region. We also see that fast-time STAP is useful for all four cases of stationary/moving radar and stationary/moving target and that slow-time STAP with moving radar is useful for both stationary and moving target.

Terrain-scattered interference (TSI), that is, jammer signals reflected on the earth's surface, is a significant problem to military airborne radar. In auxiliary beam TSI suppression, the TSI in the main radar beam is estimated by a single or several auxiliary beams and is subtracted from the main beam channel. The signal to subtract is the auxiliary beam signals fed through an estimate of the ‘reflection system’, which describes scattering on the surface. The authors first present results on the structure of this TSI suppression, on the estimation of the reflection system and on the quality of the estimate. Then the authors derive theoretical expressions for the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) and the remaining TSI power for a single auxiliary beam. Since the SINR is directly connected to the radar performance, it can be seen what factors affect the performance and how. It was noted that when the estimated reflection system is missing one or more delays of the true system, the TSI filter cannot suppress the TSI signal completely. This phenomenon, which is called ‘TSI leakage’, has a very large impact on the performance. The SINR cannot be kept constant. Instead, an ‘SINR improvement’ can be defined.

In high-quality conferencing systems, it is desired to perform noise reduction with as limited speech distortion as possible. Previous work, based on time varying amplification controlled by signal-to-noise ratio estimation in different frequency subbands, has shown promising results in this regard but can suffer from problems in situations with intense continuous speech. Further, the amount of noise reduction cannot exceed a certain level in order to avoid artifacts. This paper establishes the problems and proposes several improvements. The improved algorithm is evaluated with several different noise characteristics, and the results show that the algorithm provides even less speech distortion, better performance in a multi-speaker environment and improved noise suppression when speech is absent compared with previous work.

This paper presents a personal voice analyzer and trainer that allow the user to perform four daily exercises to improve the voice capacity. The system grades how well the user is performing the exercises by analyzing the duration, the intensity and the pitch of the user’s voice.

In recent years, it has been realized that the success of multimedia services or applications not only depends on Quality of Service (QoS) parameters but also relies on the analysis of the entire user experience (UX). The relevance of this paradigm ranges from IPTV or video-on-demand systems for distributing and sharing professional TV to user-generated content over the web. To obtain a pleasurable user experience far more aspects than QoS have to be taken into account. Major challenges in this context include the identification of relevant UX factors and the quantification of their influence on Quality of Experience (QoE). In particular, context awareness and assessment of users' expectations play an essential role. This is further justified by the emergence of new multimedia enhancement techniques, notably 3DTV and Free Viewpoint. Future Internet architectures under current research are also promising on the possibility to accommodate protocols and policies that take QoE issues into consideration. Consequently, acquired knowledge on the context and on identified parameters affecting users' experience could be used to improve media delivery.

Raman spectroscopy is a laser-based vibrational tech- nique that can provide spectral signatures unique to a multitude of compounds. The technique is gaining widespread interest as a method for detecting hidden explosives due to its sensitivity and ease of use. In this work, we present a computationally e±cient clas- si¯cation scheme for accurate stando® identi¯cation of several common explosives using visible-range Raman spectroscopy. Using real measurements, we evaluate and modify a recent correlation-based approach to classify Raman spectra from various both harmful and commonplace substances. The results show that the proposed approach can, at a distance of 30 me- ters, or more, successfully classify measured Raman spectra from several explosive substances, including Nitromethane, TNT, DNT, Hydrogen Peroxide, TATP and Ammonium Nitrate.

Raman spectroscopy is a laser-based vibrational technique that can provide spectral signatures unique to a multitude of compounds. The technique is gaining widespread interest as a method for detecting hidden explosives due to its sensitivity and ease of use. In this letter, we present a computationally efficient classification scheme for accurate standoff identification of several common explosives using visible-range Raman spectroscopy. Using real measurements, we evaluate and modify a recent correlation-based approach to classify Raman spectra from various harmful and commonplace substances. The results show that the proposed approach can, at a distance of 30 m, or more, successfully classify measured Raman spectra from several explosive substances, including nitromethane, trinitrotoluene, dinitrotoluene, hydrogen peroxide, triacetone triperoxide, and ammonium nitrate.

In wireless body sensor networks (WBSN) and wireless body area networks (WBAN), sensor nodes have different bandwidth requirements, therefore, heterogeneous traffic is created. In this paper, we propose a statistical medium access control (MAC) protocol with periodic synchronization for use in heterogeneous traffic networks based on human body communication (HBC). The MAC protocol is designated to ensure energy efficiency by means of flexible time slot allocation and a statistical frame. The statistical frame is intended to increase the sleep time and keep low duty cycles in each beacon period. The MAC protocol was fully implemented on our HBC platform. The experimental results proved that the proposed MAC protocol is compact and energy-efficient.

In our society with its aging population, the design and implementation of a highperformance distributed multi-sensor and information system for autonomous physical services become more and more important. In line with this, this thesis proposes an Intelligent Multi-Sensor System, IMSS, that surveys a human activities space to detect and identify a target for a specific service. The subject of this thesis covers three main aspects related to the set-up of an IMSS: an improved depth measurement and reconstruction method and its related uncertainty, a surveillance and tracking algorithm and finally a way to validate and evaluate the proposed methods and algorithms. The thesis discusses how a model of the depth spatial quantisation uncertainty can be implemented to optimize the configuration of a sensor system to capture information of the target objects and their environment with required specifications. The thesis introduces the dithering algorithm which significantly reduces the depth reconstruction uncertainty. Furthermore, the dithering algorithm is implemented on a sensor-shifted stereo camera, thus simplifying depth reconstruction without compromising the common stereo field of view. To track multiple targets continuously, the Gaussian Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density, GM-PHD, algorithm is implemented with the help of vision and Radio Frequency Identification, RFID, technologies. The performance of the tracking algorithm in a vision system is evaluated by a circular motion test signal. The thesis introduces constraints to the target space, the stereo pair characteristics and the depth reconstruction accuracy to optimize the vision system and to control the performance of surveillance and 3D reconstruction through integer linear programming. The human being within the activity space is modelled as a tetrahedron, and a field of view in spherical coordinates are used in the control algorithms. In order to integrate human behaviour and perception into a technical system, the proposed adaptive measurement method makes use of the Fuzzily Defined Variable, FDV. The FDV approach enables an estimation of the quality index based on qualitative and quantitative factors for image quality evaluation using a neural network. The thesis consists of two parts, where Part I gives an overview of the applied theory and research methods used, and Part II comprises the eight papers included in the thesis.

A 3D space can be reconstructed from the images produced by a pair of digital vision sen-sors. However, due to the digital sensor the reconstructed space is discretized and its quanti-sation levels are defined by the iso-disparity surfaces. Thus, the accuracy of the space depth reconstruction is related to the iso-disparity map. A validation of the reconstruction techniques requires a measurement with a high accu-racy reference. This paper introduces an easily implemented method based on a differential depth measurement. The modelling and analysis of the quantization uncertainty of the depth and differential depth measurements is presented in the paper. The model is verified through simulations, and further verified by a physical experiment.

This paper describes the performance of the Gaussian Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density (GM-PHD) filter for multiple human tracking in an intelligent vision system. Human movement trajectories were observed with a camera and tracked by the GM-PHD filter. The filter multi-target tracking ability was validated by two random motion trajectories in the paper. To evaluate the filter performance in relation to the target movement, the motion velocity and angular velocity as key evaluation factors were proposed. A circular motion model was implemented for simplified analysis of the filter tracking performance. The results indicate that the mean absolute error defined as the difference between the filter prediction and the ground truth is proportional to the motion speed and angular velocity of the target. The error is only slightly affected by the tracking targets’ number.

This paper evaluates the performance of the Gaussian Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density (GM-PHD) filter for tracking multiple targets in an intelligent vision system. A stereo vision camera is used to get the left and right image sequences in order to extract 3-D coordinates of the targets' positions in the real world scene. The 3-D trajectories of the targets are tracked by a GM-PHD filter. Moreover, the label continuity of the targets is guaranteed by a new method of labeling. Motion speed and angular velocity are proposed for the evaluation of the accuracy and label continuity of the filter in the implemented 3-D test motion model. The simulation results for two moving targets show that the proposed system not only robustly tracks them, but also maintains the label continuity of the two targets.

The depth spatial quantization uncertainty is one of the factors which influence the depth reconstruction accuracy caused by a discrete sensor. This paper discusses the quantization uncertainty distribution, introduces a mathematical model of the uncertainty interval range, and analyzes the movements of the sensors in an Intelligent Vision Agent System. Such a system makes use of multiple sensors which control the deployment and autonomous servo of the system. This paper proposes a dithering algorithm which reduces the depth reconstruction uncertainty. The algorithm assures high accuracy from a few images taken by low-resolution sensors. The dither signal is estimated and then generated through an analysis of the iso-disparity planes. The signal allows for control of the camera movement. The proposed approach is validated and compared with a direct triangulation method. The simulation results are reported in terms of depth reconstruction error statistics. The physical experiment shows that the dithering method reduces the depth reconstruction error.

The sensor-shifted stereo camera provides the mechanism for obtaining 3D information in a wide field of view. This novel kind of stereo requires a simpler matching process in comparison to convergence stereo. In addition to this, the uncertainty of depth estimation of a target point in 3D space is defined by the spatial quantization caused by the digital images. The dithering approach is a way to reduce the depth reconstruction uncertainty through a controlled adjustment of the stereo parameters that shift the spatial quantization levels. In this paper, a mathematical model that relates the stereo setup parameters to the iso-disparities is developed and used for depth estimation. The enhancement of the depth measurement accuracy for this kind of stereo through applying the dithering method is verified by simulation and physical experiment. For the verification, the uncertainty of the depth measurement using dithering is compared with the uncertainty produced by the direct triangulation method. A 49% improvement of the uncertainly in the depth reconstruction is proved.

The intelligent multi-sensor system is a system for target detection, identification and information processing for human activities surveillance and ambient assisted living. This paper describes RFID multi-target tracking using the Gaussian Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density, GM-PHD, algorithm. The multi target tracking ability of the proposed solution is demonstrated in a simulation and real environment. A performance comparison of the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm with and without the GM-PHD filter shows that the GM-PHD algorithm improves the accuracy of tracking and target position estimation significantly. This improvement is demonstrated by a simulation and by a physical experiment.

This paper investigates the radio irregularity (RI) phenomenon and its impact on communication performance in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Based on the theoretical analysis, we find that the RI phenomenon induces the asymmetric links problem. According to this discovery, we propose a novel HCT (Hop-count Correction Tree) scheme to handle this problem. HCT utilizes graph theoretical method to get a search tree and correct the hop count error that appears in the adjacent nodes. Practical results obtained from testbed experiments demonstrate that this solution can greatly improve localization accuracy in the presence of RI

The use of remote laboratories in courses at university level has been reported in literature numerous times since the mid 90?s. In this article focus is on activities carried out by teachers and students, at the Upper Secondary School Level, using the remote laboratory VISIR (Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality). The Upper Secondary School, Katedralskolan in Lund, Sweden, cooperate with Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, in a project that concerns the introduction of remote laboratory environment suitable for Upper Secondary School science courses. A remote laboratory in electronics has been introduced and is used as a complement to the traditional workbench in the hands-on laboratory. Significant results from the project are; 1) the great interest shown by the students for the remote experiments, 2) the students appreciation for the fact that it was not simulations but actual real experiments, 3) the remote laboratory is easy to implement for use by both teachers and students and 4) it can be used simultaneously by many students.

Increasing globalization and opportunities for engineers around the world to work or study anywhere mean challenges for universities wanting the best students as well as for the companies wanting for the most skilled staff. The social and economic conditions of the country where the student has studied have an impact on his level of knowledge though the attained degree is similar in all countries. It is not enough to use scores as a base for decisions. Some tests for software courses, English language etc. exists. Now the challenge is to design and implement a common test to analyze the knowledge of the student/ test taker and certify him in performing laboratory work and operating electronic instruments. A solution to overcome the problem of recruiting companies in this global market as well as the universities to select the meritorious from worldwide would be by implementing a Common Electronics Lab Operation Test. A test with the operation of the equipment in electronics laboratory has importance as test takers are tested in their knowledge with practical equipment using simulated and remote labs which are identical to the operation of real. The testing system is proposed to be developed using latest remotely operated real labs

Introduction of Smart phones redefined the usage of mobile phones in the communication world. Smart phones are equipped with various sophisticated features such as Wi-Fi, GPS navigation, high resolution camera, touch screen with broadband access which helps the mobile phone users to keep in touch with the modern world. Many of these features are primarily integrated with the mobile operating system which is out of reach to public, by which the users can't manipulate those features. Google came up with an innovative operation system termed as ANDROID, which is open system architecture with customizable third party development and debugging environment which helps the user's to manipulate the features and to create their own customizable applications. In this paper, 'Emergency Based Remote Collateral Tracking System' application using Google's Android Mobile Platform is addressed. Emergency is divided into three categories: heart beat based emergency, security threats like personal safety and road accidents. This application is targeted to a person who is driving a vehicle. Heart rate monitoring device is integrated with our application to sense the heart beat of a person driving the vehicle and if there is any abnormalities in the heart beat, then our application performs a dual role. One in which, application uses a GPS to track the location information of the user and send those location information as a message via SMS, email and post it on Facebook wall Simultaneously, an emergency signal is sent to Arduino Microcontroller. Road accidents are quite common, this application is also designed to detect the accident using the sensors in the Android Mobile. Security threat can occur anywhere, our application also answers for personal safety, when the user interacts with the application by pressing the button, then automatically the application generates the geographical information and sends that location information via SMS and email to a pre-stored emergency contact and the same information will be posted on user's Facebook wall. This application is written in JAVA programming language which runs on Eclipse Integrated Development Kit.

With the rapid growth of multimedia services, future generations of wireless communications require higher data rates and a more reliable transmission link while keeping satisfactory quality of service. In this respect, multipleinput multiple-output (MIMO) antenna systems have been considered as an efficient approach to address these demands by offering significant multiplexing and diversity gains over single-antenna systems without increasing requirements on radio resources such as bandwidth and power. Although MIMO systems can unfold their huge benefit in cellular base stations, they may face limitations when it comes to their deployment in mobile handsets. In particular, the typically small-size of mobile handsets makes it impractical to deploy multiple antennas. To overcome this drawback, the concept of cooperative communications has recently been proposed and gained large interest in the research community. The key idea is to form a virtual MIMO antenna array by utilizing a third terminal, a so-called relay node, which assists the direct communication. After receiving the source’s message, the relay processes and forwards it to the destination. With this approach, the benefits of MIMO systems can be attained in a distributed fashion. Furthermore, cooperative communications can efficiently combat the severity of fading and shadowing effects through the assistance of relay terminals. It has been shown that using the relay can extend the coverage of wireless networks. In this thesis, we focus on the performance evaluation of such cooperative communication systems and their application to mobile multimedia. The thesis is divided into five parts. In particular, the first part proposes a hybrid decode-amplify-forward (HDAF) relaying protocol which can significantly improve the performance of cooperative communication systems compared to the two conventional schemes of decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF). It is interesting to see that the performance gain of HDAF over DF and AF strictly depends on the relative value of channel conditions between the two hops. The second part extends HDAF to the case of multiple relays. It is important to note that the gains are saturated as the number of relays tends to be a large value. This observation motivates us to use a small number of relays to reduce network overhead as well as system complexity while the obtained gains are still as much as in the large-number case. In the third part, we analyze the performance of DF relaying networks with best relay selection over Nakagami-m fading channels. Besides the diversity gain, we show that the spatial multiplexing gain can be achieved by cooperative communications. We analyze the performance of cooperative multiplexing systems in terms of symbol error rate and ergodic capacity over composite fading channels. Finally, in the fifth part, we exploit the benefit of both diversity and multiplexing gain by proposing an unequal error transmission scheme for mobile multimedia services using cooperative communications.

The exact closed-form expressions for symbol error probability and outage probability of randomized distributed space-time codes (RDSTC) under Rayleigh fading are derived. The diversity gain derived in the literature uses the Chernoff bound which may not be achievable in general. Utilizing the exact expression, the achievable diversity gain of RDSTCs is validated. The closed-form expressions are verified by Monte-Carlo simulations.

The outage probability (OP) of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward (AF) relay networks using orthogonal space-time block code is investigated. In particular, a closed-form tight lower bound expression for the OP over independently but not necessarily identically distributed Nakagami-m fading channels is derived. Moreover, an asymptotic approximation for OP which reveals the coding and diversity gains is presented. The analytical expressions are validated by Monte-Carlo simulations.

In this paper, the performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) dual-hop amplify-and-forward (AF) relay systems using orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBCs) over arbitrarily correlated Nakagami-m fading channels is analyzed. In particular, closed-form expressions for the end-to-end outage probability (OP) and the symbol error probability (SEP) with arbitrary number of transceiver antennas and general correlation matrices are derived. Their mathematically tractable forms readily enable us to evaluate the performance of MIMO AF relay systems that utilize OSTBCs. For sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratios, asymptotically tight approximations for the OP and SEP are also attained which reveal insights into the effects of fading parameters and antenna correlation on the system’s performance. Furthermore, we prove that the correlation has no impact on the achievable diversity gain which is equal to the minimum of the sum of fading parameters between the two hops. Selected numerically evaluated results are presented showing an excellent agreement between the proposed analysis and equivalent Monte-Carlo simulations.

In this paper, we examine an unequal error protection (UEP) scheme for wireless imaging that is based on utilizing the distributed diversity offered by decode-and-forward (DF) networks. Specifically, the data stream after source encoding is divided into high and low priority sub-streams depending on their importance for image reconstruction. A relay-selection combining (R-SC) scheme is exploited for high priority image data to achieve high reliability while cooperative spatial multiplexing is employed to low priority image data to support high spectral efficiency. In this work, we specifically take into account the setting that relays may forward erroneously detected signals to the destination when cooperating with fixed DF. In this context, the analytical and numerical results validate that R-SC outperforms other relaying protocols in terms of average symbol error probability while the considered UEP approach offers the highest spectral efficiency among the examined relaying schemes.

The performance of two-way amplify-and-forward (AF) relay networks is presented. In particular, we derive exact closed-form expressions for symbol error rate (SER), average sum-rate, and outage probability of two-way AF relay systems in independent but not identically distributed (i.n.i.d.) Rayleigh fading channels. Our analysis is validated by a comparison against the results of Monte-Carlo simulations.

In this paper, we apply the maximal ratio combining (MRC) technique to achieve higher detection probability in cognitive radio networks over correlated Rayleigh fading channels. We present a simple approach to derive the probability of detection in closed-form expression. The numerical results reveal that the detection performance is a monotonically increasing function with respect to the number of antennas. Moreover, we provide sets of complementary receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves to illustrate the effect of antenna correlation on the sensing performance of cognitive radio networks employing MRC schemes in some respective scenarios.

In this paper, we propose a distributed Alamouti space-time code (DASTC) for two-way relay networks employing a single amplify-and-forward (AF) relay. We first derive closed-form expressions for the approximated average sum-rate of the proposed DASTC scheme. Our analysis is validated by a comparison against the results of Monte-Carlo simulations. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of our proposed scheme over the conventional DASTC with one-way communication.

In this paper, we analyze the effect of channel estimation error and delayed feedback on the performance of a cross-layer scheme combining adaptive modulation for maximum ratio transmission (MRT) at the physical layer and truncated automatic repeat request (T-ARQ) at the link layer. The cross-layer attempts to maximize the spectral efficiency under predetermined quality of service requirements, namely, delay and packet-loss constraints. In particular, we derive closed-form expressions for the average packet error rate, average achievable spectral efficiency, and the outage probability, hence, enabling to evaluate the performance of the cross-layer scheme in the presence of imperfect channel estimation at the receiver and delayed feedback path between the receiver and transmitter. The final expressions are given in terms of the minimum and maximum number of transceiver antennas as well as the channel estimation error and feedback delay parameters. We further show that with a small amount of channel estimation error and/or feedback delay the system performance is severely degraded. Specifically, numerical results demonstrate that with channel estimation error and feedback delay the performance of the cross-layer scheme is even worse than that of T-ARQ only. We also observe an irreducible outage probability floor appearing in the high signal-to-noise regime.

Cooperative spatial multiplexing (CSM) systems can achieve high spatial multiplexing gain in wireless relay networks since each single-antenna relay forwards simultaneously a different subset of source messages to the destination. In this paper, the performance of CSM with amplify-and-forward (AF) relays are presented. Specifically, we derive exact closed-form expressions for symbol error probability (SEP) and achievable spectral efficiency of CSM with linear receiver in dissimilar Rayleigh fading channels. Assessing the SEP performance in the high signal-to-noise regime, we further show that CSM with AF relays obtains the first order of diversity gain. Furthermore, it has been observed that CSM outperforms two well-known cooperative diversity systems, e.g., selection combining and maximal ratio combining, in term of spectral efficiency. We also perform Monte-Carlo simulations to validate our analysis.

In mobile multimedia networks, different traffic classes require various levels of quality of service (QoS). In this paper, we propose a cross-layer design to provide diverse QoS provisions for integrated realtime/non-realtime traffic by jointly taking into account the physical layer, data link layer, and application layer. Specifically, at the physical layer, adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) is employed to cope with the time-varying nature of fading channels whereas impairments due to queuing effects are considered at the data link layer. At the application layer, realtime and non-realtime traffic are classified into high and low priority classes, respectively, with strict priority levels. The cross-layer scheme is characterized as a discrete Markov modulated Poisson process. Solving the steady state probability of this Markov model readily enables us to investigate several important performance metrics such as packet drop rate due to buffer overflow and packet error rate due to transmission errors and network impairments. Our proposed cross-layer design is verified by comparing the analytical results with Monte-Carlo simulations. Furthermore, it has been shown that the proposed cross-layer design can flexibly guarantee QoS requirements for each traffic class.

We analyze the performance of amplify-and-forward (AF) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cooperative networks over independent but not identically distributed Nakagami-$m$ fading channels. Specifically, we consider an AF MIMO relay network where the source deploys the transmit antenna selection scheme to communicate with the destination through the help of a relay. We derive closed-form approximations for outage probability (OP) and symbol error probability (SEP). Moreover, asymptotically tight approximations for OP and SEP have been obtained to facilitate insights on how fading parameters affect the performance. Our analytical results are verified by Monte-Carlo simulations for respective scenarios.

The evolution of advanced radio transmission technologies for third and future generation mobile radio systems has paved the way for the delivery of mobile multimedia services. This is further enabled through contemporary video coding standards, such as H.264/AVC, allowing wireless image and video applications to become a reality on modern mobile devices. The extensive amount of data needed to represent the visual content and the scarce channel bandwidth constitute great challenges for network operators to deliver an intended quality of service. Appropriate metrics are thus instrumental for service providers to monitor the quality as experienced by the end user. This thesis focuses on subjective and objective assessment methods of perceived visual quality in image and video communication. The content of the thesis can be broadly divided into four parts. Firstly, the focus is on the development of image quality metrics that predict perceived quality degradations due to transmission errors. The metrics follow the reduced-reference approach, thus, allowing to measure quality loss during image communication with only little overhead as side information. The metrics are designed and validated using subjective quality ratings from two experiments. The distortion assessment performance is further demonstrated through an application for filter design. The second part of the thesis then investigates various methodologies to further improve the quality prediction performance of the metrics. In this respect, several properties of the human visual system are investigated and incorporated into the metric design. It is shown that the quality prediction performance can be considerably improved using these methodologies. The third part is devoted to analysing the impact of the complex distortion patterns on the overall perceived quality, following two goals. Firstly, the confidence of human observers is analysed to identify the difficulties during assessment of the distorted images, showing, that indeed the level of confidence is highly dependent on the level of visual quality. Secondly, the impact of content saliency on the perceived quality is identified using region-of-interest selections and eye tracking data from two independent subjective experiments. It is revealed, that the saliency of the distortion region indeed has an impact on the overall quality perception and also on the viewing behaviour of human observers when rating image quality. Finally, the quality perception of H.264/AVC coded video containing packet loss is analysed based on the results of a combined subjective video quality and eye tracking experiment. It is shown that the distortion location in relation to the content saliency has a tremendous impact on the overall perceived quality. Based on these findings, a framework for saliency aware video quality assessment is proposed that strongly improves the quality prediction performance of existing video quality metrics.

Existing video quality metrics do usually not take into consideration that spatial regions in video frames are of varying saliency and thus, differently attract the viewer's attention. This paper proposes a model of saliency awareness to complement existing video quality metrics, with the aim to improve the agreement of objectively predicted quality with subjectively rated quality. For this purpose, we conducted a subjective experiment in which human observers rated the annoyance of videos with transmission distortions appearing either in a salient region or in a non-salient region. The mean opinion scores confirm that distortions in salient regions are perceived much more annoying. It is shown that application of the saliency awareness model to two video quality metrics considerably improves their quality prediction performance.

Visual attention models are typically designed based on human gaze patterns recorded through eye tracking. In this paper, two similar eye tracking experiments from independent laboratories are presented, in which humans observed natural images under task-free condition. The resulting saliency maps are analysedwith respect to two criteria; the consistency between the experiments and the impact of the image presentation time. It is shown, that the saliency maps between the experiments are strongly correlated independent of presentation time. It is further revealed that the presentation time can be reduced without substantially sacrificing the accuracy of the convergent saliency map. The results provide valuable insight into the similarity of saliency maps from independent laboratories and are highly beneficial for the creation of converging saliency maps at reduced experimental time and cost.

We analyse variations of saliency between human observers when viewing natural image content. For this purpose, we conducted an eye tracking experiment to record gaze patterns of humans when viewing natural images. The resulting gaze patterns were used to create saliency maps for each observer and image. A correlation analysis is then conducted with the aim to quantify the variability of saliency between the observers and the different images. The results are considered to be a first step towards gaining a better understanding regarding the reliability of saliency maps for natural images.