Different music performances of the same score may significantly differ from each other. It is obvious that not only the composer?s work, the score, defines the listener?s music experience, but that the music performance itself is an integral part of this experience. Music performers use the information contained in the score, but interpret, transform or…
In this thesis, we examine the problem of algorithmic analysis of complex audio scenes with a special emphasis on natural audio scenes. One of the driving goals behind this work is to develop tools for monitoring the presence of animals in areas of interest based on their vocalisations. This task, which often occurs in the…
The verification performance of a biometric recognition system based on grip patterns, as part of a smart gun for use by the police ocers, has been investigated. The biometric features are extracted from a two-dimensional pattern of the pressure, exerted on the grip of a gun by the hand of a person holding it. Such…
It is well known that Ultra WideBand (UWB) transmission is inherently robust against small-scale-fading (SSF) that arises in multipath scattering environments, due to its large signal bandwidth. However, no model with a physical interpretation exists that relates the variations of received signal strength to the signal bandwidth and general channel parameters, like e.g. the average…
Automatic speaker recognition is the use of a machine to identify an individual from a spoken sentence. Recently, this technology has been undergone an increasing use in applications such as access control, transaction authentication, law enforcement, forensics, and system customisation, among others. One of the central questions addressed by this field is what is it…
This thesis addresses the development and enhancement of Multiactuator Panels (MAPs) with emphasis on the application to Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) reproduction. MAPs can be used alternatively to dynamic loudspeaker arrays for WFS with added benefits. However, since MAPs are panels of finite extent, excited mechanically on several points, there are structural and geometric issues…
Joint precoding and equalisation can help to effectively exploit the advantages of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) wireless communications systems. For broadband MIMO channels with channel state information (CSI) such techniques to date rely on block transmission where guard intervals are applied to mitigate inter-block (IBI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI) but reduce spectral efficiency. Therefore, this thesis…
This dissertation proposes advanced transceiver designs applying turbo and space-time (ST) concepts to continuous phase modulation (CPM which is preferred in numerous power- and band-limited communication systems for its constant envelope and spectral efficiency. Despite its highly attractive spectral properties, maximum-likelihood detection of CPM over the frequency-selective multipath fading channels can bring impractical complexity issues…
Interferometric SAR systems allow to reconstruct height profile of earth surfaces. The height reconstruction is based on phase unwrapping operation, which is an ill-posed problem since it admits infinite number of solutions. The phase unwrapping problem can be solved using the multichannel InSAR approach, based on the combination of different images of the scene obtained…
