"Completing Transition: The Main Challenges" was the topic around which the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Joint Vienna Institute organized a high-level conference in 2000, in a continuation of long-standing efforts to promote the dialogue and understanding between various regions in Europe. Given the heterogeneity of the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the heterogeneity of progress toward convergence, the outlook for finishing transition is divergent. However, what will generally be important is corporate governance and institutional reform to sufficiently underpin macroeconomic success, plus a definite commitment of the responsible institutions in the transition countries to follow the chosen policies consistently.

Automatic modulation recognition is a rapidly evolving area of signal analysis. In recent years, interest from the academic and military research institutes has focused around the research and development of modulation recognition algorithms. Any communication intelligence (COMINT) system comprises three main blocks: receiver front-end, modulation recogniser and output stage. Considerable work has been done in the area of receiver front-ends. The work at the output stage is concerned with information extraction, recording and exploitation and begins with signal demodulation, that requires accurate knowledge about the signal modulation type. There are, however, two main reasons for knowing the current modulation type of a signal; to preserve the signal information content and to decide upon the suitable counter action, such as jamming. Automatic Modulation Recognition of Communications Signals describes in depth this modulation recognition process. Drawing on several years of research, the authors provide a critical review of automatic modulation recognition. This includes techniques for recognising digitally modulated signals. The book also gives comprehensive treatment of using artificial neural networks for recognising modulation types. Automatic Modulation Recognition of Communications Signals is the first comprehensive book on automatic modulation recognition. It is essential reading for researchers and practising engineers in the field. It is also a valuable text for an advanced course on the subject.

This is an introduction to noise, describing fundamental noise sources and basic circuit analysis, discussing characterization of low-frequency noise and offering practical advice that bridges concepts of noise theory and modelling, characterization, CMOS technology and circuits. The text offers the latest research, reviewing the most recent publications and conference presentations. The book concludes with an introduction to noise in analog/RF circuits and describes how low-frequency noise can affect these circuits.

This graduate-level text lays out the foundation of DSP for audio and the fundamentals of auditory perception, then goes on to discuss immersive audio rendering and synthesis, the digital equalization of room acoustics, and various DSP implementations. It covers a variety of topics and up-to-date results in immersive audio processing research: immersive audio synthesis and rendering, multichannel room equalization, audio selective signal cancellation, multirate signal processing for audio applications, surround sound processing, psychoacoustics and its incorporation in audio signal processing algorithms for solving various problems, and DSP implementations of audio processing algorithms on semiconductor devices.

Bandwidth Extension of Speech Signals describes the theory and methods for quality enhancement of clean speech signals and distorted speech signals such as those that have undergone a band limitation, for instance, in a telephone network. Problems and the respective solutions are discussed for the different approaches. The different approaches are evaluated and a real-time implementation of the most promising approach is presented. The book includes topics related to speech coding, pattern- / speech recognition, speech enhancement, statistics and digital signal processing in general.

This volume presents the Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Vibration Problems, held in Istanbul, Turkey, September 5-9, 2005. The main objective being to stimulate a broad interdisciplinary research. The topics covered in the book vary from the effect of ground motion on the stochastic response of suspension bridges to coupling effects between different vibrations in rotor-blade systems.

This book is a research monograph on high-Frequency Seafloor Acoustics. It is the first book in a new series sponsored by the Office of Naval Research on the latest research in underwater acoustics. It provides a critical evaluation of the data and models pertaining to high-frequency acoustic interaction with the seafloor, which will be of interest to researchers in underwater acoustics and to developers of sonars. Models and data are presented so as to be readily usable, backed up by extensive explanation. Much of the data is new, and the discussion in on two levels: concise descriptions in the main text backed up by extensive technical appendices.

This classic reference on musical acoustics and performance practice begins with a brief introduction to the fundamentals of acoustics and the generation of musical sounds. It then discusses the particulars of the sounds made by all the standard instruments in a modern orchestra as well as the human voice, the way in which the sounds made by these instruments are dispersed and how the room into which they are projected affects the sounds.

Users of signal processing systems are never satis?ed with the system they currently use. They are constantly asking for higher quality, faster perf- mance, more comfort and lower prices. Researchers and developers should be appreciative for this attitude. It justi?es their constant e?ort for improved systems. Better knowledge about biological and physical interrelations c- ing along with more powerful technologies are their engines on the endless road to perfect systems. This book is an impressive image of this process. After "Acoustic Echo 1 and Noise Control" published in 2004 many new results lead to "Topics in 2 Acoustic Echo and Noise Control" edited in 2006 . Today - in 2008 - even morenew?ndingsandsystemscouldbecollectedinthisbook.Comparingthe contributions in both edited volumes progress in knowledge and technology becomesclearlyvisible: Blindmethodsandmultiinputsystemsreplace"h- ble" low complexity systems. The functionality of new systems is less and less limited by the processing power available under economic constraints. The editors have to thank all the authors for their contributions. They cooperated readily in our e?ort to unify the layout of the chapters, the ter- nology, and the symbols used. It was a pleasure to work with all of them. Furthermore, it is the editors concern to thank Christoph Baumann and the Springer Publishing Company for the encouragement and help in publi- ing this book.

This book addresses the problem of separating spontaneous multi-party speech by way of microphone arrays (beamformers) and adaptive signal processing techniques. It is written is a concise manner and an effort has been made such that all presented algorithms can be straightforwardly implemented by the reader. All experimental results have been obtained with real in-car microphone recordings involving simultaneous speech of the driver and the co-driver.

This work is the first and only book on the fundamentals of ultrasonic machining. It presents the foundations of dynamic and control for ultrasonic processing systems and considers ultrasonic systems as special vibratory machines that function by exploiting nonlinear dynamic processes. Recommendations are given for designing and tuning ultrasonic machines. The ultrasonic machines analyzed are predominantly concerned with the processing of solids.

In this book, an international team of highly qualified experts treats important topics in "Acoustic Echo and Noise Control" and report the latest developments. Methods for enhancing the quality of transmitted speech signals are gaining growing attention in universities and in industrial development laboratories.

This book is organized in five parts: Part I gives a short introduction to acoustic echo and noise control. Part II deals with multi-microphone processing. In Part III, advanced methods for both linear and nonlinear echo cancellation are presented, and techniques for intelligent control of hands-free telephones are introduced. Part IV is devoted to noise reduction procedures. An in-depth treatment of conventional and of advanced methods is given, followed by a model based approach using Kalman filters. Finally, in Part V, selected applications of acoustic echo and noise control as well as speech and audio processing in general are outlined. Topics such as auditory scene analysis, wave field synthesis for spatial sound reproduction, in-car communication systems, and hearing aids are treated.

Since 1968, the International Acoustical Imaging Symposium has provided a unique forum for advanced research, promoting the sharing of technology, developments, methods and theory among all areas of acoustics. Volume 28 of the Proceedings offers an excellent collection of papers presented in six major categories, offering both a broad perspective on the state of the art in the field as well as an in-depth look at its leading edge research.

Engineering the Guitar: Theory and Practice uniquely describes the mechanics of the guitar for engineers and craftsmen alike. Complete with informative illustrations, this popular musical volume describes the underlying mechanical concepts behind the guitar, supported by theory and test. A detailed description of guitar electronics paired with an analysis of sound quality appeals to scientific audiences as well as musicians technically apt. Readers will gain an understanding of the technical behavior of the instrument with respect to structural and component dynamics, in addition to the informative treatment of analytical models. Hand made and mass produced techniques are also examined in a chapter devoted to manufacturing processes.

Audiences interested in mechanics, acoustics, and instrument making will find Engineering the Guitar: Theory and Practice an informative and enjoyable read.

The book provides a survey of numerical methods for acoustics, namely the finite element method (FEM) and the boundary element method (BEM). It is the first book summarizing FEM and BEM (and optimization) for acoustics. The book shows that both methods can be effectively used for many other cases, FEM even for open domains and BEM for closed ones. Emphasis of the book is put on numerical aspects and on treatment of the exterior problem in acoustics, i.e. noise radiation.

Incorporating Knowledge Sources into Statistical Speech Recognition addresses the problem of developing efficient automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems, which maintain a balance between utilizing a wide knowledge of speech variability, while keeping the training / recognition effort feasible and improving speech recognition performance. The book provides an efficient general framework to incorporate additional knowledge sources into state-of-the-art statistical ASR systems. It can be applied to many existing ASR problems with their respective model-based likelihood functions in flexible ways.

In the last quarter century, delamination has come to mean more than just a failure in adhesion between layers of bonded composite plies that might affect their load-bearing capacity. Ever-increasing computer power has meant that we can now detect and analyze delamination between, for example, cell walls in solid wood. This fast-moving and critically important field of study is covered in a book that provides everyone from manufacturers to research scientists the state of the art in wood delamination studies. Divided into three sections, the book first details the general aspects of the subject, from basic information including terminology, to the theoretical basis for the evaluation of delamination. A settled terminology in this subject area is a first key goal of the book, as the terms which describe delamination in wood and wood-based composites are numerous and often confusing. The second section examines different and highly specialized methods for delamination detection such as confocal laser scanning microscopy, light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and ultrasonics. Ways in which NDE (non-destructive evaluation) can be employed to detect and locate defects are also covered. The book's final section focuses on the practical aspects of this defect in a wide range of wood products covering the spectrum from trees, logs, laminated panels and glued laminated timbers to parquet floors. Intended as a primary reference, this book covers everything from the microscopic, anatomical level of delamination within solid wood sections to an examination of the interface of wood and its surface coatings. It provides readers with the perspective of industry as well as laboratory and is thus a highly practical sourcebook for wood engineers working in manufacturing as well as a comprehensively referenced text for materials scientists wrestling with the theory underlying the subject.

Recent Developments in Time-Frequency Analysis brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this fast moving area. Recent Developments in Time-Frequency Analysis serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most challenging research issues in the field.

These Conference Proceedings are intended to summarise the latest developments in diffraction and scattering theory as reported at the IU TAM Symposium on Diffraction and Scattering in Fluid Mechanics and Elasticity held in Manchester, England on 16-20 July 2000. This in formal meeting was organised to discuss mathematical advances, both from the theoretical and more applied points of view. However, its pri mary goal was to bring together groups of researchers working in dis parate application areas, but who nevertheless share common models, phenomenological features arising in such problems, and common math ematical tools. To this end, we were delighted to have four Plenary Speakers, Professors Allan Pierce, Ed Kerschen, Roger Grimshaw and John Willis FRS, who are undisputed leaders in the four thematic ar eas of our meeting (these are respectively acoustics, aeroacoustics, water or other free surface waves, elasticity). These Proceedings should offer an excellent vehicle for continuing the dialogue between these groups of researchers. The participants were invited because of their expertise and recent contributions to this field. Collectively, there were around 90 contrib utors to the Symposium from some 13 countries located all around the world. These included 45 speakers, 35 co-authors and about 10 other delegates. Individuals came from many of the major international cen tres of excellence in the field of scattering theory."

Foundations of Voice and Speech Quality Perception starts out with the fundamental question of: "How do listeners perceive voice and speech quality and how can these processes be modeled?" Any quantitative answers require measurements. This is natural for physical quantities but harder to imagine for perceptual measurands. This book approaches the problem by actually identifying major perceptual dimensions of voice and speech quality perception, defining units wherever possible and offering paradigms to position these dimensions into a structural skeleton of perceptual speech and voice quality. The emphasis is placed on voice and speech quality assessment of systems in artificial scenarios. Many scientific fields are involved. This book bridges the gap between two quite diverse fields, engineering and humanities, and establishes the new research area of Voice and Speech Quality Perception.

Noise is everywhere and in most applications that are related to audio and speech, such as human-machine interfaces, hands-free communications, voice over IP (VoIP), hearing aids, teleconferencing/telepresence/telecollaboration systems, and so many others, the signal of interest (usually speech) that is picked up by a microphone is generally contaminated by noise. As a result, the microphone signal has to be cleaned up with digital signal processing tools before it is stored, analyzed, transmitted, or played out. This cleaning process is often called noise reduction and this topic has attracted a considerable amount of research and engineering attention for several decades. One of the objectives of this book is to present in a common framework an overview of the state of the art of noise reduction algorithms in the single-channel (one microphone) case. The focus is on the most useful approaches, i.e., filtering techniques (in different domains) and spectral enhancement methods. The other objective of Noise Reduction in Speech Processing is to derive all these well-known techniques in a rigorous way and prove many fundamental and intuitive results often taken for granted. This book is especially written for graduate students and research engineers who work on noise reduction for speech and audio applications and want to understand the subtle mechanisms behind each approach. Many new and interesting concepts are presented in this text that we hope the readers will find useful and inspiring.

The study of incompressible ?ows is vital to many areas of science and te- nology. This includes most of the ?uid dynamics that one ?nds in everyday life from the ?ow of air in a room to most weather phenomena. Inundertakingthesimulationofincompressible?uid?ows, oneoftentakes many issues for granted. As these ?ows become more realistic, the problems encountered become more vexing from a computational point-of-view. These range from the benign to the profound. At once, one must contend with the basic character of incompressible ?ows where sound waves have been analytically removed from the ?ow. As a consequence vortical ?ows have been analytically "preconditioned," but the ?ow has a certain non-physical character (sound waves of in?nite velocity). At low speeds the ?ow will be deterministic and ordered, i.e., laminar. Laminar ?ows are governed by a balance between the inertial and viscous forces in the ?ow that provides the stability. Flows are often characterized by a dimensionless number known as the Reynolds number, which is the ratio of inertial to viscous forces in a ?ow. Laminar ?ows correspond to smaller Reynolds numbers. Even though laminar ?ows are organized in an orderly manner, the ?ows may exhibit instabilities and bifurcation phenomena which may eventually lead to transition and turbulence. Numerical modelling of suchphenomenarequireshighaccuracyandmostimportantlytogaingreater insight into the relationship of the numerical methods with the ?ow physics.

A strong reference on the problem of signal and speech enhancement, describing the newest developments in this exciting field. The general emphasis is on noise reduction, because of the large number of applications that can benefit from this technology.

Turbulence modelling has long been, and will remain, one of the most important t- ics in turbulence research, challenging scientists and engineers in the academic world and in the industrial society. Over the past decade, Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) and other hybrid RANS-LES methods have received increasing attention from the turbulence-research community, as well as from industrial CFD engineers. Indeed, as an engineering modelling approach, hybrid RANS-LES methods have acquired a remarkable profile in modelling turbulent flows of industrial interest in relation to, for example, transportation, energy production and the environment. The advantage exploited with hybrid RANS-LES modelling approaches, being - tentially more computationally efficient than LES and more accurate than (unsteady) RANS, has motivated numerous research and development activities. These activities, together with industrial applications, have been further facilitated over the recent years by the rapid development of modern computing resources. As a European initiative, the EU project DESider (Detached Eddy Simulation for Industrial Aerodynamics, 2004-2007), has been one of the earliest and most systematic international R&D effort with its focus on development, improvement and applications of a variety of existing and new hybrid RANS-LES modelling approaches, as well as on related numerical issues. In association with the DESider project, two subsequent international symposia on hybrid RANS-LES methods have been arranged in Stockholm (Sweden, 2005) and in Corfu (Greece, 2007), respectively. The present book is a result of the Second Symposium on Hybrid RANS-LES Methods, held in Corfu, Greece, 17-18 June 2007.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 1997 IUTAM Symposium, where invited researchers in acoustics, aeronautics, elastodynamics, electromagnetics, hydrodynamics, and mathematics discussed non-reflecting computational boundaries. The participants formulated benchmark problems for evaluating computational boundaries, as described in the first article.