Rate-Quality Optimized Video Coding discusses the matter of optimizing (or negotiating) the data rate of compressed digital video and its quality, which has been a relatively neglected topic in either side of image/video coding and tele-traffic management. Video rate management becomes a technically challenging task since it is required to maintain a certain video quality regardless of the availability of transmission or storage media. This is caused by the broadband nature of digital video and inherent algorithmic features of mainstream video compression schemes, e.g. H.261, H.263 and MPEG series. In order to maximize the media utilization and to enhance video quality, the data rate of compressed video should be regulated within a budget of available media resources while maintaining the video quality as high as possible. In Part I (Chapters 1 to 4) the non-stationarity of digital video is discussed. Since the non-stationary nature is also inherited from algorithmic properties of international video coding standards, which are a combination of statistical coding techniques, the video rate management techniques of these standards are explored. Although there is a series of known video rate control techniques, such as picture rate variation, frame dropping, etc., these techniques do not view the matter as an optimization between rate and quality. From the view of rate-quality optimization, the quantizer is the sole means of controling rate and quality. Thus, quantizers and quantizer control techniques are analyzed, based on the relationship of rate and quality. In Part II (Chapters 5 and 6), as a coherent approach to non-stationary video, established but still thriving nonlinear techniques are applied to video rate-quality optimization such as artificial neural networks including radical basis function networks, and fuzzy logic-based schemes. Conventional linear techniques are also described before the nonlinear techniques are explored. By using these nonlinear techniques, it is shown how they influence and tackle the rate-quality optimization problem. Finally, in Chapter 7 rate-quality optimization issues are reviewed in emerging video communication applications such as video transcoding and mobile video. This chapter discusses some new issues and prospects of rate and quality control in those technology areas. Rate-Quality Optimized Video Coding is an excellent reference and can be used for advanced courses on the topic.

In the decades the of the formation of structures past subject spontaneous in far from has into a branch of - systems equilibrium major physics grown search with ties to It has become evident that strong neighboring disciplines. a diverse of can be understood within a common mat- phenomena range matical framework which has been called nonlinear of continuous dynamics This name the close to the field of nonlinear systems. emphasizes relationship of with few of freedom which has evolved into a dynamics systems degrees mature in the recent features mathematically subject past. Many dynamical of continuous be described reduction few can a to a systems actually through of freedom and of the latter of continue to degrees properties type systems of continuous the inspire study systems. The of this book is to demonstrate the numerous goal through examples that exist for the of nonlinear the opportunities study phenomena through tools of mathematical and use of common analyses dynamical interpretations. Instead of overview of the a providing comprehensive rapidly evolving field, the contributors to this book are to communicate to a wide scientific trying audience the of what have learnt about the formation of essence they spon- neous structures in continuous and about the dissipative systems competition between order and chaos that characterizes these It is that systems. hoped the book will be even to those scientists whose not helpful are disciplines the authors.

Adaptive Signal Models: Theory, Algorithms and Audio Applications presents methods for deriving mathematical models of natural signals. The introduction covers the fundamentals of analysis-synthesis systems and signal representations. Some of the topics in the introduction include perfect and near-perfect reconstruction, the distinction between parametric and nonparametric methods, the role of compaction in signal modeling, basic and overcomplete signal expansions, and time-frequency resolution issues. These topics arise throughout the book as do a number of other topics such as filter banks and multiresolution. The second chapter gives a detailed development of the sinusoidal model as a parametric extension of the short-time Fourier transform. This leads to multiresolution sinusoidal modeling techniques in Chapter Three, where wavelet-like approaches are merged with the sinusoidal model to yield improved models. In Chapter Four, the analysis-synthesis residual is considered; for realistic synthesis, the residual must be separately modeled after coherent components (such as sinusoids) are removed. The residual modeling approach is based on psychoacoustically motivated nonuniform filter banks. Chapter Five deals with pitch-synchronous versions of both the wavelet and the Fourier transform; these allow for compact models of pseudo-periodic signals. Chapter Six discusses recent algorithms for deriving signal representations based on time-frequency atoms; primarily, the matching pursuit algorithm is reviewed and extended. The signal models discussed in the book are compact, adaptive, parametric, time-frequency representations that are useful for analysis, coding, modification, and synthesis of natural signals such as audio. The models are all interpreted as methods for decomposing a signal in terms of fundamental time-frequency atoms; these interpretations, as well as the adaptive and parametric natures of the models, serve to link the various methods dealt with in the text. Adaptive Signal Models: Theory, Algorithms and Audio Applications serves as an excellent reference for researchers of signal processing and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the topic.

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.

Caustics, Catastrophes and Wave Fields in a sense continues the treatment of the earlier volume 6 "Geometrical Optics of Inhomogeneous Media" in the present book series, by analysing caustics and their fields on the basis of modern catastrophe theory. This volume covers the key generalisations of geometrical optics related to caustic asymptotic expansions: The Lewis-Kravtsov method of standard functions, Maslov's method of caonical operators, Orlov's method of interference integrals, as well as their modifications for penumbra, space-time, random and other types of caustics. All the methods are amply illustrated by worked problems concerning relevant wave-field applications.

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.

TUrbulence modeling encounters mixed evaluation concerning its impor tance. In engineering flow, the Reynolds number is often very high, and the direct numerical simulation (DNS) based on the resolution of all spatial scales in a flow is beyond the capability of a computer available at present and in the foreseeable near future. The spatial scale of energetic parts of a turbulent flow is much larger than the energy dissipative counterpart, and they have large influence on the transport processes of momentum, heat, matters, etc. The primary subject of turbulence modeling is the proper es timate of these transport processes on the basis of a bold approximation to the energy-dissipation one. In the engineering community, the turbulence modeling is highly evaluated as a mathematical tool indispensable for the analysis of real-world turbulent flow. In the physics community, attention is paid to the study of small-scale components of turbulent flow linked with the energy-dissipation process, and much less interest is shown in the foregoing transport processes in real-world flow. This research tendency is closely related to the general belief that universal properties of turbulence can be found in small-scale phenomena. Such a study has really contributed much to the construction of statistical theoretical approaches to turbulence. The estrangement between the physics community and the turbulence modeling is further enhanced by the fact that the latter is founded on a weak theoretical basis, compared with the study of small-scale turbulence."

The present decade is opening new frontiers in high-energy astrophysics. After the X-ray satellites in the 1980's, including Einstein, Tenma, EXOSAT and Ginga, several satellites are, or will soon be, simultaneously in orbit offering spectacular advances in X-ray imaging at low energies (ROSATj Yohkoh) as well as at high energies (GRANAT), in spectroscopy with increased bandwidth (ASCAj SAX), and in timing (XTE). While these satellites allow us to study atomic radiation from hot plasmas or energetic electrons, other satellites study nuclear radiation at gamma-ray energies (CGRO) associated with radioactivity or spallation reactions. These experiments show that the whole universe is emitting radiation at high energies, hence we call it the "hot universe. " The hot universe, preferentially emitting X- and gamma-rays, provides us with many surprises and much information. A symposium "The Hot Universe" was held in conjunction with the XXIIIrd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, at Kyoto on August 26-30 in 1997. The proceedings are organized as follows. Synthetic view of "the hot universe" is discussed in Section 1, "Plasma and Fresh Nucleosynthesis Phenomena". Timely discussions on the strategy for future missions "Future Space Program" are found in Section 2. Then the contents are divided into two major subjects: the compact objects and thin hot diffuse plasmas. Section 3 is devoted to the category of compact objects which includes white dwarfs, neutron stars, and gravitationally collapsed objects: stellar mass black holes or active galactic nuclei.

The present decade is opening new frontiers in high-energy astrophysics. After the X-ray satellites in the 1980's, including Einstein, Tenma, EXOSAT and Ginga, several satellites are, or will soon be, simultaneously in orbit offering spectacular advances in X-ray imaging at low energies (ROSATj Yohkoh) as well as at high energies (GRANAT), in spectroscopy with increased bandwidth (ASCAj SAX), and in timing (XTE). While these satellites allow us to study atomic radiation from hot plasmas or energetic electrons, other satellites study nuclear radiation at gamma-ray energies (CGRO) associated with radioactivity or spallation reactions. These experiments show that the whole universe is emitting radiation at high energies, hence we call it the "hot universe. " The hot universe, preferentially emitting X- and gamma-rays, provides us with many surprises and much information. A symposium "The Hot Universe" was held in conjunction with the XXIIIrd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, at Kyoto on August 26-30 in 1997. The proceedings are organized as follows. Synthetic view of "the hot universe" is discussed in Section 1, "Plasma and Fresh Nucleosynthesis Phenomena." Timely discussions on the strategy for future missions "Future Space Program" are found in Section 2. Then the contents are divided into two major subjects: the compact objects and thin hot diffuse plasmas. Section 3 is devoted to the category of compact objects which includes white dwarfs, neutron stars, and gravitationally collapsed objects: stellar mass black holes or active galactic nuclei.

The theory of the propagation of plane sound waves in layered structures is presented systematically in this book. The layered structures may be man-made, for example ultrasonic filters, lenses, and surface-wave delay lines, or natural media such as the ocean and the atmosphere with their marked horizontal stratification. A related problem is the propagation of elastic (seismic) waves in the earth's crust. The book retains many features and the general structure of the classic work "Waves in Layered Media" by L.M. Brekhovskikh, but also includes much new material that has not previously been treated in a monograph. Great attention is paid throughout to the physical interpretation of the results obtained. Although the subject of the book is acoustic waves, many of the interesting phenomena can be directly generalized to electromagnetic waves.

Proceeding from basic theory to design studies of concert and multiple purpose halls, the author introduces a remarkable seat selection system for the analysis of new and existing halls, and proposes a diagnostic system for testing the physical properties and calculating the psychological attributes at any seat after a hall is built. The book also presents a theory of subjective preferences, based on a model of the auditory cognitive system in the brain. Readers can thus follow the temporal and spatial values that may be associated with the left and right cerebral hemispheres in listening to music and speech, respectively, in a room. From the results of calculating subjective preference at each seat, for example, architects, musicians, and acoustical engineers concerned with the design and use of concert and multi-use halls may determine the best location to perform a certain type of music on the stage, as well as the best seats from which to listen.

An exciting new development has taken place in the digital era that has captured the imagination and talent of researchers around the globe - wavelet image compression. This technology has deep roots in theories of vision, and promises performance improvements over all other compression methods, such as those based on Fourier transforms, vectors quantizers, fractals, neural nets, and many others. It is this revolutionary new technology that is presented in Wavelet Image and Video Compression, in a form that is accessible to the largest audience possible. Wavelet Image and Video Compression is divided into four parts. Part I, Background Material, introduces the basic mathematical structures that underly image compression algorithms with the intention of providing an easy introduction to the mathematical concepts that are prerequisites for the remainder of the book. It explains such topics as change of bases, scalar and vector quantization, bit allocation and rate-distortion theory, entropy coding, the discrete-cosine transform, wavelet filters and other related topics. Part II, Still Image Coding, presents a spectrum of wavelet still image coding techniques. Part III, Special Topics in Still Image Coding, provides a variety of example coding schemes with a special flavor in either approach or application domain. Part IV, Video Coding, examines wavelet and pyramidal coding techniques for video data. Wavelet Image and Video Compression serves as an excellent reference and may be used as a text for advanced courses covering the subject.

The field of nonlinear optics, which has undergone a very rapid development since the discovery of lasers in the early sixties, continues to be an active and rapidly developing - search area. The interest is mainly due to the potential applications of nonlinear optics: - rectly in telecommunications for high rate data transmission, image processing and recognition or indirectly from the possibility of obtaining large wavelength range tuneable lasers for applications in industry, medicine, biology, data storage and retrieval, etc. New phenomena and materials continue to appear regularly, renewing the field. This has proven to be especially true over the last five years. New materials such as organics have been developed with very large second- and third-order nonlinear optical responses. Imp- tant developments in the areas of photorefractivity, all optical phenomena, frequency conv- sion and electro-optics have been observed. In parallel, a number of new phenomena have been reported, some of them challenging the previously held concepts. For example, solitons based on second-order nonlinearities have been observed in photorefractive materials and frequency doubling crystals, destroying the perception that third order nonlinearities are - quired for their generation and propagation. New ways of creating and manipulating nonl- ear optical materials have been developed. An example is the creation of highly nonlinear (second-order active) polymers by static electric field, photo-assisted or all-optical poling. Nonlinear optics involves, by definition, the product of electromagnetic fields. As a con- quence, it leads to the beam control.

3-D Audio Using Loudspeakers is concerned with 3-D audio systems implemented using a pair of conventional loudspeakers. A well-known problem with these systems is the requirement that the listener be properly positioned for the 3-D illusion to function correctly. This book proposes using the tracked position of the listener's head to optimize the acoustical presentation, thus producing a much more realistic illusion over a larger listening area than existing loudspeaker 3-D audio systems. Head-tracking can be accomplished by applying pattern recognition techniques to images obtained from a video camera. Thus, an immersive audio environment can be created without donning headphones or other equipment. 3-D Audio Using Loudspeakers discusses the theory, implementation, and testing of a head-tracked loudspeaker 3-D audio system. Crosstalk cancellers that can be steered to the location of a tracked listener are described. The objective performance of these systems has been evaluated using simulations and acoustical measurements made at the ears of human subjects. Many sound localization experiments were also conducted; the results show that head-tracking both significantly improves localization when the listener is displaced from the ideal listening location, and also enables dynamic localization cues. Much of the theory and experimental results presented are also applicable to loudspeaker 3-D audio systems in general, not just head-tracked ones. 3-D Audio Using Loudspeakers is of interest to researchers studying virtual acoustic displays, and to engineers developing the same. The book serves as a valuable reference to anyone working in this field.

Karlheinz Brandenburg and Mark Kahrs With the advent of multimedia, digital signal processing (DSP) of sound has emerged from the shadow of bandwidth limited speech processing. Today, the main appli cations of audio DSP are high quality audio coding and the digital generation and manipulation of music signals. They share common research topics including percep tual measurement techniques and analysis/synthesis methods. Smaller but nonetheless very important topics are hearing aids using signal processing technology and hardware architectures for digital signal processing of audio. In all these areas the last decade has seen a significant amount of application oriented research. The topics covered here coincide with the topics covered in the biannual work shop on "Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics." This event is sponsored by the IEEE Signal Processing Society (Technical Committee on Audio and Electroacoustics) and takes place at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York. A short overview of each chapter will illustrate the wide variety of technical material presented in the chapters of this book. John Beerends: Perceptual Measurement Techniques. The advent of perceptual measurement techniques is a byproduct of the advent of digital coding for both speech and high quality audio signals. Traditional measurement schemes are bad estimates for the subjective quality after digital coding/decoding. Listening tests are subject to sta tistical uncertainties and the basic question of repeatability in a different environment.

Linear signal spaces are of fundamental importance in signal and system theory, communication theory, and modern signal processing. This book proposes a time-frequency analysis of linear signal spaces that is based on two novel time-frequency representations called the `Wigner distribution of a linear signal space' and the `ambiguity function of a linear signal space'. Besides being a useful display and analysis tool, the Wigner distribution of a linear signal space allows the design of high-resolution time-frequency filtering methods. This book develops such methods and applies them to the enhancement, decomposition, estimation, and detection of noisy deterministic and stochastic signals. Formulation of the filtering (estimation, detection) methods in the time-frequency plane yields a direct interpretation of the effect of adding or deleting information, changing parameters, etc. In a sense, the prior information and the signal processing tasks are brought to life in the time-frequency plane. The ambiguity function of a linear signal space, on the other hand, is closely related to a novel maximum-likelihood multipulse estimator of the range and Doppler shift of a slowly fluctuating point target - an estimation problem that is important in radar and sonar. Specifically, the ambiguity function of a linear signal space is relevant to the problem of optimally designing a set of radar pulses. The concepts and methods presented are amply illustrated by examples and pictures. Time-Frequency Analysis and Synthesis of Linear Signal Spaces: Time-Frequency Filters, Signal Detection and Estimation, and Range-Doppler Estimation is an excellent reference and may be used as a text for advanced courses covering the subject.

The access network is expected to be one of the major battlegrounds of telecommunications network operators, since upgrades of the existing narrowband access network will be the critical factor in supplying multimedia broadband services in a competitive market. The future broadband access network architecture needs to be flexible enough to efficiently support the provision of a full set of broadband and narrowband services with a wide range of capacity demands. A wide range of broadband access technologies are available. Furthermore, the key issues in the upgrading of the very cost sensitive access network are financial as well as technological, both for incumbent and new entrant operators. Thus, in order to identify minimum-risk introductory strategies the economic viability of access network broadband upgrades needs to be carefully assessed. However, despite the definite need for techno-economic evaluations, very few books have been published in this field. One of the reasons might be that broadband access network upgrading only very recently gained wide recognition as a key challenge for broadband delivery. Secondly, this kind of strategic work and these studies tend to be considered rather sensitive by operators, and thus both results and methodologies are not usually readily available. Thirdly, the work reported in this book in many respects was a major pioneering effort, which quite ambitiously aimed at modelling the whole life-cycle costs and revenue streams of access network upgrades, as opposed to several other efforts, which often are limited to pure investment cost comparisons.

The book will appeal to both professional engineers and students and researchers in the subject. From an introduction to the basic terminology and underlying techniques, the book moves on to demonstrate the core enabling technologies, with a broad and balanced perspective given for each topic. Subsequent chapters focus on the applications and give an insight into the process of integrating a range of speech technologies for commercial solutions to customer needs. The book concludes with a speculative review of options for the future.

Mobile systems - primarily cellular telephony - have been the fastest moving telecommunications development to date with a world-wide customer base that in the ten or so years to April 1996 reached 100 million and continues with a current growth rate of 60% per annum world-wide. Predictions suggest that the customer base will exceed 1 billion within the next ten years and that the saturation level is around 80% of any population. Faced with such statistics any book such as this can proffer little more than a snapshot of the activities and developments that are at present taking place within the mobile world. It can, however, reflect on some of the underlying principles that support the industry. The opening chapter offers a vision for the future of mobile communications - that of more mobile than fixed connections to the world's telecommunica tions networks - one which, interestingly, pre-dates the emergence of the information superhighway. The Internet whose growth of computer networks has, in recent years, exceeded that of even mobile systems is demanding ever more bandwidth to support its multimedia applications and access for people on the move. The communications needs of the next century customer are the driv ers behind the convergence of computing and telecommunications networks, the mobile component of which will be realized as Third Generation Mobile Sys tems (fGMS)."

FolJowing the formulation of the laws of mechanics by Newton, Lagrange sought to clarify and emphasize their geometrical character. Poincare and Liapunov successfuIJy developed analytical mechanics further along these lines. In this approach, one represents the evolution of all possible states (positions and momenta) by the flow in phase space, or more efficiently, by mappings on manifolds with a symplectic geometry, and tries to understand qualitative features of this problem, rather than solving it explicitly. One important outcome of this line of inquiry is the discovery that vastly different physical systems can actually be abstracted to a few universal forms, like Mandelbrot's fractal and Smale's horse-shoe map, even though the underlying processes are not completely understood. This, of course, implies that much of the observed diversity is only apparent and arises from different ways of looking at the same system. Thus, modern nonlinear dynamics 1 is very much akin to classical thermodynamics in that the ideas and results appear to be applicable to vastly different physical systems. Chaos theory, which occupies a central place in modem nonlinear dynamics, refers to a deterministic development with chaotic outcome. Computers have contributed considerably to progress in chaos theory via impressive complex graphics. However, this approach lacks organization and therefore does not afford complete insight into the underlying complex dynamical behavior. This dynamical behavior mandates concepts and methods from such areas of mathematics and physics as nonlinear differential equations, bifurcation theory, Hamiltonian dynamics, number theory, topology, fractals, and others.

Multilingual Text-to-Speech Synthesis: The Bell Labs Approach is the first monograph-length description of the Bell Labs work on multilingual text-to-speech synthesis. Every important aspect of the system is described, including text analysis, segmental timing, intonation and synthesis. There is also a discussion of evaluation methodologies, as well as a chapter outlining some future areas of research. While the book focuses on the Bell Labs approach to the various problems of converting from text into speech, other approaches are discussed and compared. Thus, this book serves both the function of providing a single reference to an important strand of research in multilingual synthesis, while at the same time providing a source of information on current trends in the field. Chapters in this work were contributed by Richard Sproat, Jan van Santen, Bernd Mobius, Chilin Shih, Joseph Olive, Evelyne Tzoukermann, all of Bell Labs, and Kazuaki Maeda of the University of Pennsylvania.

Information systems for very large applications present problems of scale which generate the need for particular software design techniques. The system used by BT for its customer services is usable as a paradigm for any user operating with a large and complex client base. This book will cover some of the more important systems currently deployed by BT to manage its multi-million customer network, the architecture that guides these systems, the evolving technology from which they are built and the future directions in their evolution. Computing Systems for Global Telecommunications is essential reading for software engineers working on all types of large Operational Support Systems; systems designers working for telecommunications providers; advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers studying software engineering.

ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks are widely considered to be the new protocol for high speed communication systems, both for broadband information highways and for local and wide area networks. This book provides the reader with an authoritative overview of the subject and presents the latest findings from leading edge research in the area, concentrating particularly on the way ATM is being developed with early services in mind. The key issue of how ATM can provide different services is discussed, focusing on issues relating to the control quality of service. Written by research and development engineers at the British Telecommunications Laboratories, this book is essential reading for engineers in telecommunications operating companies working in network design and related fields, engineers in telecommunications and computer companies working on systems design, broadband equipment vendors and postgraduate and research students of telecommunications and computing.

This book provides an introduction to turbulence in vortex systems, and to turbulence theory for incompressible flow described in terms of the vorticity field. It is the author's hope that by the end of the book the reader will believe that these subjects are identical, and constitute a special case of fairly standard statistical mechanics, with both equilibrium and non-equilibrium aspects. The author's main goal is to relate turbulence to statistical mechanics. The book is organized as follows: the first three chapters constitute a fairly standard introduction to homogeneous turbulence in incompressible flow; a quick review of fluid mechanics; a summary of the appropriate Fourier theory; a summary of Kolmogorov's theory of the inertial range. The next four chapters present the statistical theory of vortex notion, and the vortex dynamics of turbulence. The book ends with the major conclusion that turbulence can no longer be viewed as incomprehensible. This book will be appropriate for professionals in the fields of applied mathematics, mechanical engineering, or physics, as well as graduate students in these noted areas.

This text presents a clear, systematic, and comprehensive introduction to the relevant mathematics and physics of linear and nonlinear oscillations and waves. Special emphasis is placed on the basic equations and known as well as new analytical solutions, which are clarified by numerous illustrations. The book is written for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of physics, mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, and fluid mechanics. It will also be of use to scientists and engineers involved in research at universities and in industry.