Communications and Signal Processing – serie

Beamforming: Sensor Signal Processing for Defence Applications presents a range of important research contributions concerned with sensor array signal processing and, in particular, with the superresolution beamformers fundamental to many civilian and defence applications. Both space and space-time (STAP) beamforming algorithms and their application to radar systems are considered with emphasis given to "look-down" airborne radars, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), arrayed MIMO radar and a number of common wake-wave detection algorithms for two-dimensional SAR imagery. Furthermore, ocean towed arrays, which find applications in a variety of areas such as defence, oil and gas exploration, and geological and marine life studies, are also considered paying particular attention to receiver positional uncertainties resulting from the array's flexible structure. Array geometrical and electrical uncertainties, design of auto-calibration algorithms, beamforming "pointing" error uncertainties and robustification issues are also presented.This book is self-contained and unified in its presentation, and comprehensively covers some of the classic and fundamental models of beamforming for sensor signal processing. It is suitable as an advanced textbook for graduate students and researchers in the area of signal processing, as well as a reference book for engineers in the defence industry.

This book deals with the creation of the algorithmic backbone that enables a computer to perceive humans in a monitored space. This is performed using the same signals that humans process, i.e., audio and video. Computers reproduce the same type of perception using sensors and algorithms in order to detect and track multiple interacting humans, by way of multiple cues, like bodies, faces or speech. This application domain is challenging, because audio and visual signals are cluttered by both background and foreground objects. First, particle filtering is established as the framework for tracking. Then, audio, visual and also audio-visual tracking systems are separately explained. Each modality is analyzed, starting with sensor configuration, detection for tracker initialization and the trackers themselves. Techniques to fuse the modalities are then considered. Instead of offering a monolithic approach to the tracking problem, this book also focuses on implementation by providing MATLAB code for every presented component. This way, the reader can connect every concept with corresponding code. Finally, the applications of the various tracking systems in different domains are studied.

This book provides the first comprehensive and easy-to-read discussion of joint source-channel encoding and decoding for source signals with continuous amplitudes. It is a state-of-the-art presentation of this exciting, thriving field of research, making pioneering contributions to the new concept of source-adaptive modulation.The book starts with the basic theory and the motivation for a joint realization of source and channel coding. Specialized chapters deal with practically relevant scenarios such as iterative source-channel decoding and its optimization for a given encoder, and also improved encoder designs by channel-adaptive quantization or source-adaptive modulation.Although Information Theory is not the main topic of the book — in fact, the concept of joint source-channel coding is contradictory to the classical system design motivated by a questionable practical interpretation of the separation theorem — this theory still provides the ultimate performance limits for any practical system, whether it uses joint source-channel coding or not. Therefore, the theoretical limits are presented in a self-contained appendix, which is a useful reference also for those not directly interested in the main topic of this book.

Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Code presents an up-to-date, comprehensive and in-depth discussion of an important emerging class of space-time codes, called the Quasi-Orthogonal STBC (QO-STBC). Used in Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication systems, they provide transmit diversity with higher code rates than the well-known orthogonal STBC (O-STBC), yet at lower decoding complexity than non-orthogonal STBC. This book will help readers gain a broad understanding of the fundamental principles as well as the state-of-the-art work in QO-STBC, thus enabling them to appreciate the roles of QO-STBC in future broadband wireless systems and to inspire further research.