• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.12-19
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• 2008

Detection of a number plate consists of three stages; division of a number plate, extraction of each character from the plate, recognition of the characters. Among of these three states, division stage of a number plate is the most important part and also the most time-consuming state. This paper suggests an effective region extraction method of a number plate for various images obtained from unmanned inspection systems of illegal parking violation, especially when we have to consider the diverse surrounding environments of roads. Our approaching method detects each region by investigating the characteristics in changes of brightness and intensity between the background part and character part, and the characteristics on character parts such as the sizes, heights, widths, and distance in between two characters. The method also divides a number plate into different types of the plate. This research can solve the number plate region detection failure problems caused by plate edge damages not only for Korean domestic number plates but also for new European style number plates. The method also reduces the time consumption by processing the detection in real-time, therefore, it can be used as a practical solution.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.2715-2720
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• 2014

Median filtering is very effective to remove impulse type noises, so it has been widely used in many signal processing applications. However, due to the time complexity of its non-linearity, median filtering is often used using a small filter window size. A lot of work has been done on devising fast median filtering algorithms, but most of them can be efficiently applied to input data with finite integer values like images. Little work has been carried out on fast 2-d median filtering algorithms that can deal with real-valued 2-d data. In this paper, a fast and simple median 2-d filter is presented, and its performance is compared with the Matlab's 2-d median filter and a heap-based 2-d median filter. The proposed algorithm is shown to be much faster than the Matlab's 2-d median filter and consistently faster than the heap-based algorithm that is much more complicated than the proposed one. Also, a more efficient median filtering scheme for 2-d real valued data with a finite range of values is presented that uses higher-bit integer 2-d median filtering with negligible quantization errors.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.35-41
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• 2020

Fast Fourier transform (FFT) processors have been widely used in various application such as communications, image, and biomedical signal processing. Especially, high-performance and low-power FFT processing is indispensable in OFDM-based communication systems. This paper presents a novel radix-26 FFT algorithm with low computational complexity and high hardware efficiency. Applying a 7-dimensional index mapping, the twiddle factor is decomposed and then radix-26 FFT algorithm is derived. The proposed algorithm has a simple twiddle factor sequence and a small number of complex multiplications, which can reduce the memory size for storing the twiddle factor. When the coefficient of twiddle factor is small, complex constant multipliers can be used efficiently instead of complex multipliers. Complex constant multipliers can be designed more efficiently using canonic signed digit (CSD) and common subexpression elimination (CSE) algorithm. An efficient complex constant multiplier design method for the twiddle factor multiplication used in the proposed radix-26 algorithm is proposed applying CSD and CSE algorithm. To evaluate performance of the previous and the proposed methods, 256-point single-path delay feedback (SDF) FFT is designed and synthesized into FPGA. The proposed algorithm uses about 10% less hardware than the previous algorithm.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.49 no.12
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• pp.64-72
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• 2012

Synchronization including timing recovery, frequency offset compensation, and frame synchronization is most important signal processing block in all wireless/wired communication systems. In most communication systems, synchronization schemes based on training sequences or preambles are used. WLAN standards of 802.11a/g/n released by IEEE are based on OFDM systems. OFDM systems are known to be much more sensitive to frequency and timing synchronization errors than single carrier systems. A loss of orthogonality between the multiplexed subcarriers can result in severe performance degradations. The starting position of the frame and the beginning of the symbol and training symbol can be estimated using correlation methods. Correlation processing functionality is usually complex because of large number of multipliers in implementation especially when the reference signal is non-binary. In this paper, a simple correlation based synchronization scheme is proposed for IEEE 802.11a/g/n systems. Existing property of a periodicity in the training symbols are exploited. Simulation and implementation results show that the proposed method has much smaller complexity without any performance degradation than the existing schemes.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2008

Ad-Hoc network is a network architecture which has no backbone network and is deployed temporarily and rapidly in emergency or war without fixed mobile infrastructures. All communications between network entities are carried in ad-hoc networks over the wireless medium. Due to the radio communications being extremely vulnerable to propagation impairments, connectivity between network nodes is not guaranteed. Therefore, many new algorithms have been studied recently. This study proposes the secondary header approach to the cluster based routing protocol (CBRP). The primary header becomes abnormal status so that the primary header can not participate in the communications between network entities, the secondary header immediately replaces the primary header without selecting process of the new primary header. This improves the routing interruption problem that occurs when a header is moving out from a cluster or in the abnormal status. The performances of proposed algorithm ACBRP(Advanced Cluster Based Routing Protocol) are compared with CBRP. The cost of the primary header reelection of ACBRP is simulated. And results are presented in order to show the effectiveness of the algorithm.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.464-474
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• 2003

Ultrasonic imaging of 3-D structures for nondestructive evaluation must provide readily recognizable images with enough details to clearly show various flaws that may or may not be present. Typical flaws that need to be detected are miniature cracks, for instance, in metal pipes having aged over years of operation in nuclear power plants; and these sub-millimeter cracks or flaws must be depicted in the final 3-D image for a meaningful evaluation. As a step towards improving conspicuity and thus detection of flaws, we propose a pulse-echo ultrasonic imaging technique to generate various 3-D views of the 3-D object under evaluation through strategic scanning and processing of the pulse-echo data. We employ a 2-D Wiener filter that filters the pulse-echo data along the plane orthogonal to the beam propagation so that ultrasonic beams can be sharpened. This three-dimensional processing and display coupled with 3-D manipulation capabilities by which users are able to pan and rotate the 3-D structure improve conspicuity of flaws. Providing such manipulation operations allow a clear depiction of the size and the location of various flaws in 3-D.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.55-65
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• 2016

Detecting an object which is located at seabed is an important issue for various areas. This paper presents an approach to detection of an object that is placed at seabed in the shallow water. A conventional scheme is to employ a side-scan sonar to obtain images of a detection area and to use image processing schemes to recognize an object. Since this approach relies on high frequency signals to get clear images, its detection range becomes shorter and the processing time is getting longer. In this paper, we consider an active sonar system that is repeatedly sending a linear frequency modulated signal of 6~20 kHz in the shallow water of 100m depth. The proposed approach is to model consecutively received reflected signals and to measure their modeling error magnitudes which decide the existence of an object placed on seabed depending on relative magnitude with respect to threshold value. The feature of this approach is to only require an assumption that the seabed consists of an homogeneous sediment, and not to require a prior information on the specific properties of the sediment. We verify the proposed approach in terms of detection probability through computer simulation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.35S no.8
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• pp.1-11
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• 1998

One of the desired features for the realizations of high quality Information and Telecommunication services in future is "the Sensation of Reality". This will be achieved only with the visual communication based on the 3- dimensional (3-D) moving images. The main difficulties in realizing 3-D moving image communication are that there is no developed data transmission technology for the hugh amount of data involved in 3-D images and no established technologies for 3-D image recording and displaying in real time. The currently known stereoscopic imaging technologies can only present depth, no moving parallax, so they are not effective in creating the sensation of the reality without taking eye glasses. The more effective 3-D imaging technologies for achieving the sensation of reality are those based on the multiview 3-D images which provides the object image changes as the eyes move to different directions. In this paper, a multiview 3-D imaging system composed of 8 CCD cameras in a case, a RGB(Red, Green, Blue) beam projector, and a holographic screen is introduced. In this system, the 8 view images are recorded by the 8 CCD cameras and the images are transmitted to the beam projector in sequence by a signal converter. This signal converter converts each camera signal into 3 different color signals, i.e., RGB signals, combines each color signal from the 8 cameras into a serial signal train by multiplexing and drives the corresponding color channel of the beam projector to 480Hz frame rate. The beam projector projects images to the holographic screen through a LCD shutter. The LCD shutter consists of 8 LCD strips. The image of each LCD strip, created by the holographic screen, forms as sub-viewing zone. Since the ON period and sequence of the LCD strips are synchronized with those of the camera image sampling adn the beam projector image projection, the multiview 3-D moving images are viewed at the viewing zone.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.18-25
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• 2018

In this paper, we present a low-power implementation of the multi-channel hearing aid system using a general-purpose DSP chip. The system includes an acoustic amplification algorithm based on Wide Dynamic Range Compression (WDRC), an adaptive howling canceller, and a single-channel noise reduction algorithm. To achieve a low-power implementation, each algorithm is re-constructed in forms of integer program, and the integer program is converted to the assembly program using BelaSigna(R) 250 instructions. Through experiments using the implementation system, the performance of each processing algorithm was confirmed in real-time. Also, the clock of the implementation system was measured, and it was confirmed that the entire signal processing blocks can be performed in real time at about 7.02MHz system clock.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.28-34
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• 2003

A problem of ground subsidence has been a focus of our research over the past 3 years. The purpose of this study is to investigate the disturbed stratigraphic structure by mining and to separate the possible ground subsidence area using shallow seismic reflection survey and processing. To overcome the problems such as the distortion and attenuation of seismic signal caused by ground disturbance and to acquire the high frequency data, an array with short spacing (0.3m) for both the shot and receivers, yielding near-offset (<30m) and CMP spacing of 0.15m was implemented. Data were acquired along the survey line with length of about 43m by fixed receiver array. By considering statics caused by the ground disturbance and offset distribution of data, careful processing steps such as muting and residual statics correction were applied for successful shallow reflection imaging. By correlating the ground subsidence data and stack section, possible subsidence zone could be interpreted quantitatively.