• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.504-516
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• 2017

The Jordan Research and Training Reactor (JRTR) is the first research reactor in Jordan, the commissioning of which is ongoing. The reactor is a 5-MWth, open-pool type, light-water-moderated, and cooled reactor with a heavy water reflector system. The neutron measurement system (NMS) applied to the JRTR employs a wide-range fission chamber that can cover from source range to power range. A high-sensitivity boron trifluoride counter was added to obtain more accurate measurements of the neutron signals and to calibrate the log power signals; the NMS has a major role in the entire commissioning stage. However, few case studies exist concerning the application of the NMS to a research reactor. This study introduces the features of the NMS and the boron trifluoride counter in the JRTR and shares valuable experiences from lessons learned from the system installation to its early commissioning. In particular, the background noise relative to the signal-to-noise ratio and the NMS signal interlock are elaborated. The results of the count rates with the neutron source and the effects of the discriminator threshold are summarized.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.181-186
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• 2019

Background and Objectives: This study compared the perception of mono-syllabic and bisyllabic words in Tamil by young normal hearing adults in the presence of multi-talker speech babble at two signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Further for this comparison, a speech perception in noise test was constructed using existing mono-syllabic and bi-syllabic word lists in Tamil. Subjects and Methods: A total of 30 participants with normal hearing in the age range of 18 to 25 years participated in the study. Speech-in-noise test in Tamil (SPIN-T) constructed using mono-syllabic and bi-syllabic words in Tamil was used as stimuli. The stimuli were presented in the background of multi-talker speech babble at two SNRs (0 dB and +10 dB SNR). Results: The effect of noise on SPIN-T varied with SNR. All the participants performed better at +10 dB SNR, the higher of the two SNRs considered. Additionally, at +10 dB SNR performance did not vary significantly for neither mono-syllabic or bi-syllabic words. However, a significant difference existed at 0 dB SNR. Conclusions: The current study indicated that higher SNR leads to better performance. In addition, bi-syllabic words were identified with minimal errors compared to mono-syllabic words. Spectral cues were the most affected in the presence of noise leading to more of place of articulation errors for both mono-syllabic and bi-syllabic words.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.181-186
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• 2019

Background and Objectives: This study compared the perception of mono-syllabic and bisyllabic words in Tamil by young normal hearing adults in the presence of multi-talker speech babble at two signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Further for this comparison, a speech perception in noise test was constructed using existing mono-syllabic and bi-syllabic word lists in Tamil. Subjects and Methods: A total of 30 participants with normal hearing in the age range of 18 to 25 years participated in the study. Speech-in-noise test in Tamil (SPIN-T) constructed using mono-syllabic and bi-syllabic words in Tamil was used as stimuli. The stimuli were presented in the background of multi-talker speech babble at two SNRs (0 dB and +10 dB SNR). Results: The effect of noise on SPIN-T varied with SNR. All the participants performed better at +10 dB SNR, the higher of the two SNRs considered. Additionally, at +10 dB SNR performance did not vary significantly for neither mono-syllabic or bi-syllabic words. However, a significant difference existed at 0 dB SNR. Conclusions: The current study indicated that higher SNR leads to better performance. In addition, bi-syllabic words were identified with minimal errors compared to mono-syllabic words. Spectral cues were the most affected in the presence of noise leading to more of place of articulation errors for both mono-syllabic and bi-syllabic words.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.3E
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• pp.87-96
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• 2007

In this paper we propose a new noise reduction algorithm for stationary and nonstationary noisy environments. Our algorithm classifies the speech and noise signal contributions in time-frequency bins, and is not based on a spectral algorithm or a minimum statistics approach. It relies on calculating the ratio of the standard deviation of the noisy power spectrum in time-frequency bins to its normalized time-frequency average. We show that good quality can be achieved for enhancement speech signal by choosing appropriate values for ${\delta}_t\;and\;{\delta}_f$. The proposed method greatly reduces the noise while providing enhanced speech with lower residual noise and somewhat higher mean opinion score (MOS), background intrusiveness (BAK) and signal distortion (SIG) scores than conventional methods.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Navigation
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.37-44
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• 1998

This paper presents a procedure for automated extraction of ridge shadows in noisy gray images. This procedure mainly consists of 1) a deformable model which is designed basing upon the knowledge about the shape of shadows and is expected to be useful in extracting ridge shadows especially located in low signal to noise ratio background, and 2) the scale space scheme which is also useful even if there is less information about the size and the positions of ridge shadows in advance. This procedure is applied to artificial images and its performance is evaluated experimentally.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.37-39
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• 2009

In the research of speech recognition, locating the beginning and end of a speech utterance in a background of noise is of great importance. Since the background noise presenting to record will introduce disturbance while we just want to get the stationary parameters to represent the corresponding speech section, in particular, a major source of error in automatic recognition system of isolated words is the inaccurate detection of beginning and ending boundaries of test and reference templates, thus we must find potent method to remove the unnecessary regions of a speech signal. The conventional methods for speech endpoint detection are based on two simple time-domain measurements - short-time energy, and short-time zero-crossing rate, which couldn't guarantee the precise results if in the low signal-to-noise ratio environments. This paper proposes a novel approach that finds the Lyapunov exponent of time-domain waveform. This proposed method has no use for obtaining the frequency-domain parameters for endpoint detection process, e.g. Mel-Scale Features, which have been introduced in other paper. Comparing with the conventional methods based on short-time energy and short-time zero-crossing rate, the novel approach based on time-domain Lyapunov Exponents(LEs) is low complexity and suitable for Digital Isolated Word Recognition System.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.29-37
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• 2019

Purpose DMIDR(Discovery Molecular Imaging Digital Ready, General Electric Healthcare, USA) is a PET/CT scanner designed to allow application of PSF(Point Spread Function), TOF(Time of Flight) and Q.Clear algorithm. Especially, Q.Clear is a reconstruction algorithm which can overcome the limitation of OSEM(Ordered Subset Expectation Maximization) and reduce the image noise based on voxel unit. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the performance of reconstruction algorithms and optimize the algorithm combination to improve the accurate SUV(Standardized Uptake Value) measurement and lesion detectability. Materials and Methods PET phantom was filled with $^{18}F-FDG$ radioactivity concentration ratio of hot to background was in a ratio of 2:1, 4:1 and 8:1. Scan was performed using the NEMA protocols. Scan data was reconstructed using combination of (1)VPFX(VUE point FX(TOF)), (2)VPHD-S(VUE Point HD+PSF), (3)VPFX-S (TOF+PSF), (4)QCHD-S-400((VUE Point HD+Q.Clear(${\beta}-strength$ 400)+PSF), (5)QCFX-S-400(TOF +Q.Clear(${\beta}-strength$ 400)+PSF), (6)QCHD-S-50(VUE Point HD+Q.Clear(${\beta}-strength$ 50)+PSF) and (7)QCFX-S-50(TOF+Q.Clear(${\beta}-strength$ 50)+PSF). CR(Contrast Recovery) and BV(Background Variability) were compared. Also, SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) and RC(Recovery Coefficient) of counts and SUV were compared respectively. Results VPFX-S showed the highest CR value in sphere size of 10 and 13 mm, and QCFX-S-50 showed the highest value in spheres greater than 17 mm. In comparison of BV and SNR, QCFX-S-400 and QCHD-S-400 showed good results. The results of SUV measurement were proportional to the H/B ratio. RC for SUV is in inverse proportion to the H/B ratio and QCFX-S-50 showed highest value. In addition, reconstruction algorithm of Q.Clear using 400 of ${\beta}-strength$ showed lower value. Conclusion When higher ${\beta}-strength$ was applied Q.Clear showed better image quality by reducing the noise. On the contrary, lower ${\beta}-strength$ was applied Q.Clear showed that sharpness increase and PVE(Partial Volume Effect) decrease, so it is possible to measure SUV based on high RC comparing to conventional reconstruction conditions. An appropriate choice of these reconstruction algorithm can improve the accuracy and lesion detectability. In this reason, it is necessary to optimize the algorithm parameter according to the purpose.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.114-119
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• 2019

This paper discusses the development of a Raman lidar system for remote detection and measurement of hydrogen gas by using a photon counter. The Raman signal of the hydrogen gas is very weak and has a very low signal-to-noise ratio. The photon counter has the advantage of improving the signal-to-noise ratio, because it has a discriminator to eliminate the background noise from the Raman signal of the hydrogen gas. Therefore, a small and portable Raman lidar system was developed using a low-power pulsed laser and a photon-counter system to measure the hydrogen gas concentration remotely. To verify the capability of measuring hydrogen gas using the developed photon-counting Raman lidar system, experiments were carried out using a gas chamber in which it is possible to adjust the hydrogen gas concentration. As a result, our photon-counting Raman lidar system is seen to measure a minimum concentration of 0.65 vol.% hydrogen gas at a distance of 10 m.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.31-34
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• 1972

The reciprocal space method of increasing the signal to background ratio in X-ray diffraction work with single crystal is extended to the case of equatorial neutron diffraction works. The formulae of optimum width of the detectors with If e various experimental methods are derived.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.95-102
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• 2008

This paper proposes an adaptive speech enhancement system based on an auditory system to enhance speech that is degraded by various background noises. As such, the proposed system detects voiced and unvoiced sections, adaptively adjusts the coefficients for both the lateral inhibition and the amplitude component according to the detected sections for each input fame, then reduces the noise signal using a time-delay neural network. Based on measuring the signal-to-noise ratio, experiments confirm that the proposed system is effective for speech degraded by various noises.