Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is seen as one of several promising technologies aimed to help mine detection. GPR is sensitive to any inhomogeneity in the ground. Therefore any APM regardless of the metal content can be detected. On the other hand, all the inhomogeneities, which do not represent mines, show up as a clutter in GPR images. Moreover, it is known that reflectivity of APM is often weaker than that of stones, pieces of shrapnel and barbed wire, etc. Altogether these factors cause GPR to produce unacceptably high false alarm rate whilst it reaches the 99.6% detection rate which is prescribed by an UN resolution as a standard for humanitarian demining. The main goal of the work presented in the thesis is reduction of the false alarm rate while keeping the 99.6% detection rate intact. To reach this goal a ...

Signal acquisition is a main topic in signal processing. The well-known Shannon-Nyquist theorem lies at the heart of any conventional analog to digital converters stating that any signal has to be sampled with a constant frequency which must be at least twice the highest frequency present in the signal in order to perfectly recover the signal. However, the Shannon-Nyquist theorem provides a worst-case rate bound for any bandlimited data. In this context, Compressive Sensing (CS) is a new framework in which data acquisition and data processing are merged. CS allows to compress the data while is sampled by exploiting the sparsity present in many common signals. In so doing, it provides an efficient way to reduce the number of measurements needed for perfect recovery of the signal. CS has exploded in recent years with thousands of technical publications and applications ...

Hyperspectral (HS) imaging, which consists of acquiring a same scene in several hundreds of contiguous spectral bands (a three dimensional data cube), has opened a new range of relevant applications, such as target detection [MS02], classification [C.-03] and spectral unmixing [BDPD+12]. However, while HS sensors provide abundant spectral information, their spatial resolution is generally more limited. Thus, fusing the HS image with other highly resolved images of the same scene, such as multispectral (MS) or panchromatic (PAN) images is an interesting problem. The problem of fusing a high spectral and low spatial resolution image with an auxiliary image of higher spatial but lower spectral resolution, also known as multi-resolution image fusion, has been explored for many years [AMV+11]. From an application point of view, this problem is also important as motivated by recent national programs, e.g., the Japanese next-generation space-borne ...

In this dissertation we focus on statistical signal processing for Data Fusion, with a particular focus on wireless sensor networks. Six topics are studied: (i) Data Fusion for classification under model uncertainty; (ii) Decision Fusion over coherent MIMO channels; (iii) Performance analysis of Maximum Ratio Combining in MIMO decision fusion; (iv) Decision Fusion over non-coherent MIMO channels; (v) Decision Fusion for distributed classification of multiple targets; (vi) Data Fusion for inverse localization problems, with application to wideband passive sonar platform estimation. The first topic of this thesis addresses the problem of lack of knowledge of the prior distribution in classification problems that operate on small data sets that may make the application of Bayes' rule questionable. Uniform or arbitrary priors may provide classification answers that, even in simple examples, may end up contradicting our common sense about the problem. Entropic ...

This Thesis is focused on the combination of multiple biometric traits for automatic person authentication, in what is called a multimodal biometric system. More generally, any type of biometric information can be combined in what is called a multibiometric system. The information sources in multibiometrics include not only multiple biometric traits but also multiple sensors, multiple biometric instances (e.g., different fingers in fingerprint verification), repeated instances, and multiple algorithms. Most of the approaches found in the literature for combining these various information sources are based on the combination of the matching scores provided by individual systems built on the different biometric evidences. The combination schemes following this architecture are typically based on combination rules or trained pattern classifiers, and most of them assume that the score level fusion function is fixed at verification time. This Thesis considers the problem of ...

In this thesis, we attack the problem of identifying humans from their three dimensional facial characteristics. For this purpose, a complete 3D face recognition system is developed. We divide the whole system into sub-processes. These sub-processes can be categorized as follows: 1) registration, 2) representation of faces, 3) extraction of discriminative features, and 4) fusion of matchers. For each module, we evaluate the state-of-the art methods, and also propose novel ones. For the registration task, we propose to use a generic face model which speeds up the correspondence establishment process. We compare the benefits of rigid and non-rigid registration schemes using a generic face model. In terms of face representation schemes, we implement a diverse range of approaches such as point clouds, curvature-based descriptors, and range images. In relation to these, various feature extraction methods are used to determine the ...

This study compares the performances of different classification schemes and fusion techniques for target differentiation and localization of commonly encountered features in indoor robot environments using sonar sensing. Differentiation of such features is of interest for intelligent systems in a variety of applications such as system control based on acoustic signal detection and identification, map-building, navigation, obstacle avoidance, and target tracking. The classification schemes employed include the target differentiation algorithm developed by Ayrulu and Barshan, statistical pattern recognition techniques, fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm, and artificial neural networks. The fusion techniques used are Dempster-Shafer evidential reasoning and different voting schemes. To solve the consistency problem arising in simple majority voting, different voting schemes including preference ordering and reliability measures are proposed and verified experimentally. To improve the performance of neural network classifiers, different input signal representations, two different training algorithms, and ...

Dynamic textures are common in natural scenes. Examples of dynamic textures in video include fire, smoke, clouds, volatile organic compound (VOC) plumes in infra-red (IR) videos, trees in the wind, sea and ocean waves, etc. Researchers extensively studied 2-D textures and related problems in the fields of image processing and computer vision. On the other hand, there is very little research on dynamic texture detection in video. In this dissertation, signal and image processing methods developed for detection of a specific set of dynamic textures are presented. Signal and image processing methods are developed for the detection of flames and smoke in open and large spaces with a range of up to $30$m to the camera in visible-range (IR) video. Smoke is semi-transparent at the early stages of fire. Edges present in image frames with smoke start loosing their sharpness ...

Super-resolution (SR) is a filtering technique that combines a sequence of under-sampled and degraded low-resolution images to produce an image at a higher resolution. The reconstruction takes advantage of the additional spatio-temporal data available in the sequence of images portraying the same scene. The fundamental problem addressed in super-resolution is a typical example of an inverse problem, wherein multiple low-resolution (LR)images are used to solve for the original high-resolution (HR) image. Super-resolution has already proved useful in many practical cases where multiple frames of the same scene can be obtained, including medical applications, satellite imaging and astronomical observatories. The application of super resolution filtering in consumer cameras and mobile devices shall be possible in the future, especially that the computational and memory resources in these devices are increasing all the time. For that goal, several research problems need to be ...

Mapping stationary objects and tracking moving targets are essential for many autonomous functions in vehicles. In order to compute the map and track estimates, sensor measurements from radar, laser and camera are used together with the standard proprioceptive sensors present in a car. By fusing information from different types of sensors, the accuracy and robustness of the estimates can be increased. Different types of maps are discussed and compared in the thesis. In particular, road maps make use of the fact that roads are highly structured, which allows relatively simple and powerful models to be employed. It is shown how the information of the lane markings, obtained by a front looking camera, can be fused with inertial measurement of the vehicle motion and radar measurements of vehicles ahead to compute a more accurate and robust road geometry estimate. Further, it ...

The interest for the intelligent vehicle field has been increased during the last years, must probably due to an important number of road accidents. Many accidents could be avoided if a device attached to the vehicle would assist the driver with some warnings when dangerous situations are about to appear. In recent years, leading car developers have recorded significant efforts and support research works regarding the intelligent vehicle field where they propose solutions for the existing problems, especially in the vision domain. Road detection and following, pedestrian or vehicle detection, recognition and tracking, night vision, among others are examples of applications which have been developed and improved recently. Still, a lot of challenges and unsolved problems remain in the intelligent vehicle domain. Our purpose in this thesis is to design an Obstacle Recognition system for improving the road security by ...

Automatic face recognition has attracted a lot of attention not only because of the large number of practical applications where human identification is needed but also due to the technical challenges involved in this problem: large variability in facial appearance, non-linearity of face manifolds and high dimensionality are some the most critical handicaps. In order to deal with the above mentioned challenges, there are two possible strategies: the first is to construct a “good” feature space in which the manifolds become simpler (more linear and more convex). This scheme usually comprises two levels of processing: (1) normalize images geometrically and photometrically and (2) extract features that are stable with respect to these variations (such as those based on Gabor filters). The second strategy is to use classification structures that are able to deal with non-linearities and to generalize properly. To ...

In this thesis, we consider the problem of decentralized estimation under communication constraints in the context of Collaborative Signal and Information Processing. Motivated by sensor network applications, a high volume of data collected at distinct locations and possibly in diverse modalities together with the spatially distributed nature and the resource limitations of the underlying system are of concern. Designing processing schemes which match the constraints imposed by the system while providing a reasonable accuracy has been a major challenge in which we are particularly interested in the tradeoff between the estimation performance and the utilization of communications subject to energy and bandwidth constraints. One remarkable approach for decentralized inference in sensor networks is to exploit graphical models together with message passing algorithms. In this framework, after the so-called information graph of the problem is constructed, it is mapped onto the ...

Every day we share our personal information through digital systems which are constantly exposed to threats. For this reason, security-oriented disciplines of signal processing have received increasing attention in the last decades: multimedia forensics, digital watermarking, biometrics, network monitoring, steganography and steganalysis are just a few examples. Even though each of these elds has its own peculiarities, they all have to deal with a common problem: the presence of one or more adversaries aiming at making the system fail. Adversarial Signal Processing lays the basis of a general theory that takes into account the impact that the presence of an adversary has on the design of effective signal processing tools. By focusing on the application side of Adversarial Signal Processing, namely adversarial information fusion in distributed sensor networks, and adopting a game-theoretic approach, this thesis contributes to the above mission ...

Multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) radars achieve high resolution of arrival direction by transmitting orthogonal waveforms, performing matched filtering at the receiver end and then jointly processing the measurements of all receive antennas. This dissertation studies the use of compressive sensing (CS) and matrix completion (MC) techniques as means of reducing the amount of data that need to be collected by a MIMO radar system, without sacrificing the system’s good resolution properties. MIMO radars with sparse sensing are useful in networked radar scenarios, in which the joint processing of the measurements is done at a fusion center, which might be connected to the receive antennas via a wireless link. In such scenarios, reduced amount of data translates into bandwidth and power saving in the receiver-fusion center link. First, we consider previously defined CS-based MIMO radar schemes, and propose optimal transmit antenna ...