Design and analysis of a flow control scheme over wireless networks

This paper studies the problem of congestion control on wireless networks. A dynamical model for the end‐to‐end network flow control that exploits the differentiation between congestion loss and physical channel error loss is proposed. The introduction of a specific wireless model is motivated by the distinctive presence of channel errors, which are often not known exactly. We assume that each wireless link is associated with an additional error function that depends on the current flow along the link and that accounts for the packet loss rate caused by the physical channel. This leads to a new dynamic flow control scheme that naturally extends a known mathematical model for the fluid‐flow approximation of the Transmission Control Protocol for wireline networks. The main objective of this work is to study the dynamical properties of the new model: we analyze its nonlinear dynamics, derive its stability properties, and study its robustness to delays. We also present and discuss some ns‐2 simulations of its dynamics. This work additionally looks at the actual implementation of the proposed scheme: by requiring only modifications to the application layer rather than the transport one, no alterations to the network infrastructure or transport protocols are needed. The article argues that the new scheme appears to be not only theoretically meaningful but also practically relevant for an application layer implementation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Deconvolution: a novel signal processing approach for determining activation time from fractionated electrograms and detecting infarcted tissue

BACKGROUND: Two important signal processing applications in electrophysiology are activation mapping and characterization of the tissue substrate from which electrograms are recorded. We hypothesize that a novel signal-processing method that uses deconvolution is more accurate than amplitude, derivative, and manual activation time estimates. We further hypothesize that deconvolution quantifies changes in morphology that detect electrograms recorded from regions of myocardial infarction. METHODS AND RESULTS: To determine the accuracy of activation time estimation, 600 unipolar electrograms were calculated with a detailed computer model using various degrees of coupling heterogeneity to model infarction. Local activation time was defined as the time of peak inward sodium current in the modeled myocyte closest to the electrode. Deconvolution, minimum derivative, and maximum amplitude were calculated. Two experienced electrophysiologists blinded to the computer-determined activation times marked their estimates of activation time. F tests compared the variance of activation time estimation for each method. To evaluate the performance of deconvolution to detect infarction, 380 unipolar electrograms were recorded from 10 dogs with infarcts resulting from ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery. The amplitude, duration, number of inflections, peak frequency, bandwidth, minimum derivative, and deconvolution were calculated. Metrics were compared by Mann-Whitney rank-sum tests, and receiver operating curves were plotted. CONCLUSIONS: Deconvolution estimated local activation time more accurately than the other metrics (P < .0001). Furthermore, the algorithm quantified changes in morphology (P < .0001) with superior performance, detecting electrograms recorded from regions of myocardial infarction. Thus, deconvolution, which incorporates a priori knowledge of electrogram morphology, shows promise to improve present clinical metrics.     

Theoretical and numerical aspects of an SVD-based method forband-limiting finite-extent sequences

The authors present an SVD-based method for band-limiting over-sampled discrete-time finite-extent sequences. For this purpose, they show that finite-extent band limitation is best defined in terms of the discrete prolate spheroidal sequences rather than complex exponentials. Their method has maximum energy concentration as defined in the paper, its dimension agrees asymptotically with Slepian's (1978) dimension result, and the method specializes correctly to the discrete-time Fourier transform as the sample size tends to infinity. They propose an efficient computational method, based on the Lanczos algorithm, for computing only the necessary singular vectors. The SVD is signal-independent, only needs to be done once and can be precomputed. The SVD-based band limitation itself is not necessarily much slower than the fast Fourier transform for sample sizes on the order of 4096     

On the stability of sigma delta modulators

A framework for stability analysis of sigma-delta modulators is presented. It is argued that limit cycles for constant inputs are natural objects to investigate in this context. A number of analytical and approximate techniques to aid the stability analysis of the double loop and interpolative modulators are discussed and lead to ways of improving the design that explicitly take stability into account     

Systematic design of phase-shifting masks with extended depth offocus and/or shifted focus plane

An optimization based algorithm for designing phase-shifting masks is proposed. The approach is an extension of the previous work in the sense that the intensity image is optimized at a number of optical planes rather than just the focus plane. In addition, the algorithm can be used to design masks with shifted focus plane and/or extended depth of focus. The concept of a dual mask is introduced, and its consequences for practical phase-shifting mask design are shown. The proposed design techniques are applied to single line phase connectors, cross phase connectors, contact holes and bright lines. Simulation and experimental results verify the capability of the design technique for extending depth of focus and shift the focus plane     

Inverse and approximation problem for two-dimensional fractal sets

The geometry of fractals is rich enough that they have extensively been used to model natural phenomena and images. Iterated function systems (IFS) theory provides a convenient way to describe and classify deterministic fractals in the form of a recursive definition. As a result, it is conceivable to develop image representation schemes based on the IFS parameters that correspond to a given fractal image. In this paper, we consider two distinct problems: an inverse problem and an approximation problem. The inverse problem involves finding the IFS parameters of a signal that is exactly generated via an IFS. We make use of the wavelet transform and of the image moments to solve the inverse problem. The approximation problem involves finding a fractal IFS-generated image whose moments match, either exactly or in a mean squared error sense, a range of moments of the original image. The approximating measures are generated by an IFS model of a special form and provide a general basis for the approximation of arbitrary images. Experimental results verifying our approach will be presented.     

Bit allocation for joint source/channel coding of scalable video

We propose an efficient bit allocation algorithm for a joint source/channel video codec over noisy channels. The approach is to distribute the available source and channel coding bits among the subbands in such a way that the expected distortion is minimized. The constructed distortion curves bound the performance degradation should the channel be estimated incorrectly. The algorithm can be used in other similar distortion minimization problems with two constraints, such as power or complexity.     

Constructing a Multivalued Representation for View Synthesis

A fundamental problem in computer vision and graphics is that of arbitrary view synthesis for static 3-D scenes, whereby a user-specified viewpoint of the given scene may be created directly from a representation. We propose a novel compact representation for this purpose called the multivalued representation (MVR). Starting with an image sequence captured by a moving camera undergoing either unknown planar translation or orbital motion, a MVR is derived for each preselected reference frame, and may then be used to synthesize arbitrary views of the scene. The representation itself is comprised of multiple depth and intensity levels in which the k-th level consists of points occluded by exactly k surfaces. To build a MVR with respect to a particular reference frame, dense depth maps are first computed for all the neighboring frames of the reference frame. The depth maps are then combined together into a single map, where points are organized by occlusions rather than by coherent affine motions. This grouping facilitates an automatic process to determine the number of levels and helps to reduce the artifacts caused by occlusions in the scene. An iterative multiframe algorithm is presented for dense depth estimation that both handles low-contrast regions and produces piecewise smooth depth maps. Reconstructed views as well as arbitrary flyarounds of real scenes are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.     

Resolution enhancement of color video sequences

We propose a new multiframe algorithm to enhance the spatial resolution of frames in video sequences. Our technique specifically accounts for the possibility that motion estimation will be inaccurate and compensates for these inaccuracies. Experiments show that our multiframe enhancement algorithm yields perceptibly sharper enhanced images with significant signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement over bilinear and cubic B-spline interpolation.     

Real-time Internet video using error resilient scalable compressionand TCP-friendly transport protocol

We introduce a point to point real-time video transmission scheme over the Internet combining a low-delay TCP-friendly transport protocol in conjunction with a novel compression method that is error resilient and bandwidth-scalable. Compressed video is packetized into individually decodable packets of equal expected visual importance. Consequently, relatively constant video quality can be achieved at the receiver under lossy conditions. Furthermore, the packets can be truncated to instantaneously meet the time varying bandwidth imposed by a TCP-friendly transport protocol. As a result, adaptive flows that are friendly to other Internet traffic are produced. Actual Internet experiments together with simulations are used to evaluate the performance of the compression, transport, and the combined schemes