Detection and elimination of 2-D transmission error patterns inDPCM images

The paper studies two methods for detecting and removing channel error patterns in images transmitted by two-dimensional differential-pulse-code-modulation (2-D DCM) with fixed-length words. The methods are based on statistical classification and filtering procedures. For the predictions A+(C-B)/2 and A+(D-B)/2 in combination with 4-b DPCM, it is demonstrated experimentally by computer simulation that the effect of channel errors can effectively be reduced at bit-error rates (BERs) up to approximately 0.1%     

Detection and correction of transmission errors in facsimile images

Today, facsimile is recognized as the primary communication tool for both printed and written materials. Most facsimile machines operating on public switched telephone networks use the Group 3 (G3) facsimile compression standards, in which images are entropy-coded. Although the synchronization codeword end of line (EOL) is employed, a transmission error in a codeword may cause the current codeword, the subsequent codewords in the current line, even the codewords in the subsequent lines to be misinterpreted, resulting in a great degradation of the received image. The objective of the proposed error detection and correction approaches is to completely or partially eliminate transmission errors in G3 facsimile images, requiring no extra transmission bit rate and without changing the transmitter and the receiver. The proposed approaches are based on the error checking conditions derived from the relationship between the current line and the previous line as well as the constraints on compressed image data. A corrupted line is detected if any of the error checking conditions is satisfied. When a corrupted line is detected, a sequence of bit inversions and redecoding operations are performed on the current corrupted line and/or its previous lines so that at least one possible (feasible) redecoding solution can be found. Then, the best solution is selected by using some selection criterion. Based on simulation results, the proposed approaches can recover the original or high-quality facsimile images from their corresponding corrupted facsimile images. This shows the feasibility of the proposed approaches     

Dielectric-loaded wideband gyro-TWT

The bandwidth of a gyro-TWT (traveling-wave tube) can be widened by employing a dielectric-loaded waveguide to reduce the circuit's dispersion. Fast wave interaction allows the requirements on the beam's quality to be relaxed compared with slow wave interaction. A low-α (≡ν_⊥/ν_z) electron beam is chosen to avoid the absolute instability and minimize the possibility of dielectric charging. This device is investigated using a self-consistent single-mode, large-signal simulation based on a slow time scale formulation. Simulation results show that a constant drive bandwidth of 20% can be achieved for a 100 kV, 5 A electron beam with a velocity ratio of α=0.59 and an axial velocity spread of 2.0%. The growth rate is relatively low because of the low α of the electron beam. The design of a proof-of-principle experiment is described. The tube is expected to deliver a power of 80 kW from 9 to 11 GHz with 15% efficiency and a saturated gain of 30 dB. The performance of a single-anode magnetron injection gun designed to produce the required high-quality electron beam has been studied through simulation     

Saliency-directed color image segmentation using modified particle swarm optimization

Color image segmentation, an ill-posed problem, can be treated as a process of dividing a color image into some constituent regions and each region is homogeneous. In this study, a saliency-directed color image segmentation approach using “simple” modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed, in which both low-level features and high-level image semantics extracted from each color image are employed. To extract high-level image semantics from each color image, the visual attention saliency map for each color image is generated by three (color, intensity, and orientation) feature maps, which is used to guide region merging using “simple” modified PSO and a hybrid fitness function for color image segmentation. The proposed approach contains four stages, namely, color quantization, feature extraction, small region elimination, and region merging using “simple” modified PSO. Based on the experimental results obtained in this study, as compared with four comparison approaches, the proposed approach usually provides the better color image segmentation results.     

Experimental investigation of a broadband dielectric-loadedgyro-TWT amplifier

The bandwidth of a gyrotron travelling wave amplifier has been broadened by incorporating a dielectric-loaded interaction waveguide to reduce the circuit's dispersion. This proof-of-principle experiment was designed for the X-band frequency range and operates in the fundamental mode of a rectangular waveguide loaded with dielectric Macor. The amplifier is zero-drive stable and demonstrates a peak output power of 55 kW, 11% efficiency, 27 dB saturated gain with an unprecedented untapered gyro-TWT constant-drive bandwidth of 11% and a saturated bandwidth of 14%. Its performance can be further enhanced by reducing the beam's axial velocity spread as shown by previous simulation studies     

A novel hybrid of adaptive array and equalizer for mobilecommunications

The combination of the adaptive array and equalizer (AE) has been developed for suppressing the cochannel interference and the intersymbol interference (ISI) in mobile communications. In this paper, a novel hybrid of the adaptive array and equalizer (NHAE) system is proposed to combat the problems of insufficient degrees of freedom and mainbeam multipath interferers. The NHAE utilizes a modified training sequence to adjust the weight vector of the array that leads the array to cancel only the cochannel interferers. The ISI which is caused by the multipath interferers and the transmission system is removed by the equalizer following the array. Therefore, the array in the NHAE may need a fewer number of the elements than the conventional array which cancels both the cochannel interferers and multipath interferers. Besides, the presence of the mainbeam multipath interferers, which may seriously degrade the performance of the AE, has much less effect on the NHAE since it is suppressed by the equalizer instead of by the array. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the merits of the NHAE     

Saliency-directed color image interpolation using artificial neural network and particle swarm optimization

In this study, a saliency-directed color image interpolation approach using artificial neural network (ANN) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed. First, a high-quality saliency map of a color image to be interpolated is generated by a modified block-based visual attention model in an effective manner. Then, based on the saliency map, bilinear interpolation and ANN-PSO interpolation are employed for non-saliency (non-ROI) and saliency (ROI) blocks, respectively, to obtain the final color interpolation results. In the proposed ANN-PSO interpolation scheme, ANN is used to determine the orientation of each 5 × 5 image pattern (block), whereas PSO is employed to determine the weights in 5 × 5 interpolation filtering masks. The proposed approach is applicable to image interpolation with arbitrary magnification factors (MFs). Based on the experimental results obtained in this study, the color interpolation results by the proposed approach are better than those by five comparison approaches.     

Fast codeword search technique for the encoding of variable-ratevector quantisers

The authors present a fast search algorithm for the encoding of variable-rate vector quantisers (VQs). The optimal encoder for the variable-rate full-search VQs considers both the squared distance and channel index length for the search of codewords. Therefore, the existing fast search algorithms for the fixed-rate full-search VQs might not be able to effectively reduce the computational complexities for the variable-rate VQs. An algorithm is presented which solves this problem using a two-stage search process. A large number of undesired codewords are removed at the first stage of the search with a small computational overhead. At the second stage, the optimal codeword are searched among the remaining codewords using the partial distance search technique in the transform domain. Simulation results show that the algorithm is more effective than other fast search algorithms for the variable-rate VQs