Networked signal processing

In today’s information-based societies, millions of individuals and devices are connected wirelessly. Networked sensors acquire measurements relevant to fields such as automation, healthcare, transportation, energy distribution, surveillance, remote sensing, and robotics. The Signal Processing Group develops advanced methods for processing and interpreting sensor data and for converting the information gained into pertinent actions. In doing so, it addresses challenges posed by “big data” scenarios, the upcoming Internet of Things, and the ubiquitous proliferation of sensor devices in current and future sensor–communication–actuator networks. The focus of the Signal Processing Group is on the analysis of data streams, the semantic understanding of audio, image, and video signals, and distributed cognition and control problems in agent networks.

Who are we?

projects publications patents devices partners events

Franz HlawatschFranz Hlawatsch – TUW supervisor
Franz Hlawatsch (IEEE Fellow) received the Dr. techn. and Univ.-Dozent degrees from TU Wien, Vienna, Austria in 1988 and 1996, respectively. Since 1983, he has been with the Institute of Telecommunications, TU Wien. In 1991–1992, 1999, 2000, and 2001, he held visiting positions with the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA; INP/ENSEEIHT, Toulouse, France; and IRCCyN, Nantes, France. His research interests include the theory and application of statistical and compressive signal processing.

 

Radim BurgetRadim Burget – SIX supervisor
Radim Burget (BUT) received his PhD in Teleinformatics at Brno University of Technology in 2010. His field of interest is image processing and information automation. The objectives of his group are accelerated machine learning algorithms, evolutionary algorithms and semantical unstructured data analysis and understanding.

 

 Projects & Cooperation

  • With cooperation with local ICT software company we have developed a method for intelligent optimization and control of business processes. This method was tested and deployed in environment of one of the key logistics company operating in Central Europe. The delivered method was based on artificial intelligence utilizing genetic programming and saved up to 40 % of time and resources, when deployed.
  • EU/FP6/IST project MASCOT (Multiple Access Space-Time Coding Testbed). Partners: Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien (FTW), Nokia, Fraunhofer Institute for Communications/Heinrich Hertz Institute, Politecnico di Torino, ETH Zurich, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Project goal: Development and VHDL implementation of transceiver techniques for multiuser MIMO communication systems. Product duration: 2006–2008
  • EU/FP5/IST project ANTIUM (Advanced Radio Network Identification Equipment for Universal Mobile Communications). Partners: Thalès, Télédiffusion de France, Bouygues Telecom, Telefonica I+D, Université de Marne la Vallée. Project goal: Development of algorithms and a demonstrator unit for interference analysis/identification within UMTS mobile communications networks and potential cellular DVB-T networks. Product duration: 2001–2003

 

  • OPTOKON, a.s.
    Prototype for intrusion detection of large scale monitored area
    The company deals with supply of special equipment for the military and security companies. The aim of the project was the design and development of distributed sensor system suitable for example for border, objects or areas surveillance, as well as for monitoring of the pipelines, or monitoring of other sources of mechanical vibrations. The total range of the system should work up to 100 km with a resolution of 100 m. A multi-purpose surveillance system using standard telecommunication optical fiber as a distributed sensor was developed. The whole system is located on only one side of the optical fiber. By using the existing telecommunication optical paths it is possible to monitor and detect events around the optical fiber. The total range of the system works up to 100 km with a resolution of 100 m. The advantages include the ability to recognize between different events. The system detects a large range of events, e.g. movement of vehicles, aircrafts or walking intruders. A huge advantage is that it is a very flexible system that can be connected directly to already built information and monitoring systems according to customer requirements.
  • 1st place in Joseph Fourier award
    Researcher and member of Signal Processing work group, Dr. Jiri Mekyska, won 1st place in Joseph Fourier award organized by French Embassy in the Czech Republic and company Bull Ltd. He got the prize for his research work in the field of non-invasive neurodegenerative diseases analysis.

 Publication record (selected)

  • P. Drotár, J. Mekyska, I. Rektorová, L. Masarová, Z. Smékal, M. Faúndez Zanuy, “Decision support framework for Parkinsons disease based on novel handwriting markers,” IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, vol. 23, no. 3, 2015, p. 1-8. ISSN: 1534-4320. (IF: 3,188)
  • K. Říha, et al. “Novel method for localization of common carotid artery transverse section in ultrasound images using modified viola-jones detector,” Ultrasound in medicine & biology, vol. 39, no. 10, 2013, pp. 1887-1902. (IF: 2,2)
  • I. Eliášová, J. Mekyska, M. Košťálová, R. Mareček, Z. Smékal, I. Rektorová, “Acoustic evaluation of short-term effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on motor aspects of speech in Parkinson‘ s disease,” Journal of Neural Transmission, vol. 120, no. 4, 2013, pp. 597-605. ISSN: 0300-9564. (IF: 2,4)
  • O. Hlinka, F. Hlawatsch, and P. M. Djuric, “Distributed particle filtering in agent networks: A survey, classification, and comparison,” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 30, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 61–81.
  • G. Tauböck, F. Hlawatsch, D. Eiwen, and H. Rauhut, “Compressive estimation of doubly selective channels in multicarrier systems: Leakage effects and sparsity-enhancing processing,” IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, vol. 4, no. 2, Apr. 2010, pp. 255–271.
  • F. Meyer, H. Wymeersch, M. Fröhle, and F. Hlawatsch, “Distributed estimation with information-seeking control in agent networks,” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications – Special Issue on Location-Awareness for Radios and Networks, 2015.

 Patents

  • Point-Interpolation and Point-Distance Method of Image Sequence Analysis Containing a space-Varying Object
    dealing with the measurement of geometrical dynamic object parameters captured in a video sequence.
  • Method of Equalizing a Multicarrier Signal for Intercarrier Interference
  • Technique and Equipment for Blind Equalization of Signals Transmitted over Time-varying Transmission Channels
  • Technique and Transmit/Receive Equipment for Transmission of Data Streams

 Devices

  • GPU supercomputer
    Special computer equipped with massively parallel devices of more than 9000 computing units and fast bus. With their help it is possible to accelerate machine learning tasks and simulations up to 720 times.
  • 3D printer
    3D inkjet printer is a special equipment which can create full, photo-realistic color 3D prints: three dimensional solid high-resolution objects with a color texture (4-channel CMYK). This enables rapid prototyping typically in architecture, consumer product designing, digital manufacturing, fine art production and better understanding of virtual object e.g. in medicine.

 Partners (selected)

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
    MIT is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861. In cooperation with team from MIT we were taking part of joint research of image processing methods for EM slices will be used to train machine learning algorithms for the purpose of automatic segmentation of neural structures.
  • Polytechnic School Tecnocampus
    The Polytechnic School Tecnocampus (ESP), part of the TecnoCampus Mataro-Maresme, is a center affiliated to an excellence university such as the Polytechnic University of Catalunya. The ESP is the university referent of Mataro and Maresme (Spain) regarding audiovisual, industrial, information and communication technologies, oriented to the knowledge society and faithful to a service dedicated to the technological, economic, and scientific progress of its environment.
  • Acoustics Research Institute
    Acoustics Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna is active in areas of physical and computational acoustics, psychoacoustics, acoustic phonetics, mathematics and signal processing for acoustics. Based on two bilateral projects, we cooperate with this institution in the field of signal processing, namely in developing audio restoration algorithms such as signal declipping and completing missing signal parts. We also participate on development of an open-source, Large Time-Frequency Analysis Toolbox.
  • NATO STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE)
    La Spezia, Italy – Paolo Braca
  • Stony Brook University,
    NY, USA – Petar M. Djurić
  • University of Connecticut,
    Storrs, CT, USA – Peter Willett
  • Honeywell Czech Republic, Automation and Control Solutions
    The Honeywell ACS department offers products and solutions for the control of thermal heating and technological processes for automation equipment. The Signal processing working group collaborates in the evaluation of noise but for only certain components of industrial products, according to current standards.
  • Rapid-I
    The Rapid-I company offers software, problem solutions and services in the area of predictive analysis, data mining and text mining. The company focuses on intelligent automated analysis of large data corpuses, i.e. for a large amount of structured data such as databases and unstructured data such as texts.
  • Webnode
    Webnode is a Brno located company with international operations. One of their key software product is providing cheap web hosting services together with tools for quick and easy creation of free website, which contain more than 60 million of users every month. Their other products includes artificial intelligence for business process optimization and automation of text processing.

 Events

  • ICUMT 2015 – The 7th International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems
    ICUMT is an IEEE (R8 + CS Section SP/CAS/COM Joint Chapter) technically co-sponsored (approved) premier an annual international congress providing an open forum for researchers, engineers, network planners and service providers targeted on newly emerging algorithms, systems, standards, services, and applications, bringing together leading international players in telecommunications, control systems, automation and robotics.
  • International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP)
    In cooperation with the IEEE Czechoslovakia Section SP/CAS/COM Joint Chapter, the TSP 2015 Conference is organized by eight European universities from Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, Poland, Slovak Republic, and Slovenia for academics, researchers, and developers
  • Franz Hlawatsch and his group organized and taught two industry courses, “Two-Day Tutorial on MIMO Communication Systems” and “Two-Day Tutorial on OFDM Communication Systems,” at Siemens AG, Vienna, Austria (2004 and 2005).
  • Franz Hlawatsch was Technical Program Co-chair of the 12th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2004), Vienna, Austria, Sept. 2004