Sharif Digital Repository

Hypercontractivity has had many successful applications in mathematics, physics, and theoretical computer science. In this work we use recently established properties of the hypercontractivity ribbon of a pair of random variables to study a recent conjecture regarding the mutual information between binary functions of the individual marginal sequences of a sequence of pairs of random variables drawn from a doubly symmetric binary source  

Automatic cell segmentation has various applications in different parts of science. The development of automated methods for cell segmentation, remains challenging in situations where there are touching cells. In this paper we propose a new method for separating touching cells. As the first step, we use a combination of graph segmentation algorithm and thresholding for segmenting foreground objects and producing a binary image. Next, boundary points of separation zone are selected by using a corner detection algorithm. Finally, the marker controller watershed transform is applied to separate touching cells at selected points. © 2008 IEEE  

A novel burst correction coding for correction of bulk errors in block-based image coding is developed. The algorithm makes artificial correlation between image pixels that distorts the image. By choosing appropriate parameters, one can control this distortion to lie in acceptable ranges. Our method can exactly correct an erroneously decoded block when using lossless codecs. In the presence of lossy codecs, the algorithm encounters a processing error which makes a noisy image after correction. The Wiener filter is used to reduce this noise. Experimental results show that our method can correct corrupted large blocks in images; the ability that other previously reported approaches have not... 

In this paper we present an algorithm for complex-valued sparse representation. In our previous work we presented an algorithm for Sparse representation based on smoothed l0-norm. Here we extend that algorithm to complex-valued signals. The proposed algorithm is compared to FOCUSS algorithm and it is experimentally shown that the proposed algorithm is about two or three orders of magnitude faster than FOCUSS while providing approximately the same accuracy. ©2008 IEEE  

In this paper an extension of the sparse decomposition problem is considered and an algorithm for solving it is presented. In this extension, it is known that one of the shifted versions of a signal s (not necessarily the original signal itself) has a sparse representation on an overcomplete dictionary, and we are looking for the sparsest representation among the representations of all the shifted versions of s. Then, the proposed algorithm finds simultaneously the amount of the required shift, and the sparse representation. Experimental results emphasize on the performance of our algorithm. ©2008 IEEE  

A new high-performance architecture for decoding the irregular Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes with respect to the iterative message-passing decoding algorithm is explored. The proposed method is based on reducing the logic delays in the iterative processing of the bit nodes and check nodes leading to the increment of maximum possible frequency. The simulations show the efficiency of the proposed method in low/high-complexity graph matrices, though it is more effective in high-complexity ones. About 28% reduction of the combinational delay in the bit/check processors is explored without much impacting the area consumption. ©2007 IEEE  

The Boolean satisfiability problem plays a central role in computational complexity and is often used as a starting point for showing NP lower bounds. Generalisations such as Succinct SAT, where a Boolean formula is succinctly represented as a Boolean circuit, have been studied in the literature in order to lift the Boolean satisfiability problem to higher complexity classes such as NEXP. While, in theory, iterating this approach yields complete problems for k-NEXP for all k > 0, using such iterations of Succinct SAT is at best tedious when it comes to proving lower bounds. The main contribution of this paper is to show that the Boolean satisfiability problem has another canonical... 

This paper proposes a high-level test generation method which considers the control part as well as data path of a register transfer level circuit as a set of polynomial functions to generate behavioral test patterns from faulty behavior instead of comparing the faulty and fault-free circuits based on a hybrid Boolean-word canonical representation called Horner expansion diagram. Since this set of polynomial functions express primary outputs and next states with respect to primary inputs and present states, it is not necessary to perform justification/propagation phase which leads to a minimum number of backtracks. It improves fault coverage and reduces test generation time over logic-level... 

This paper proposes an efficient parallel algorithm for computing Lagrange interpolation on k-ary n-cube networks. This is done using the fact that a k-ary n-cube can be decomposed into n link-disjoint Hamiltonian cycles. Using these n link-disjoint cycles, we interpolate Lagrange polynomial using full bandwidth of the employed network. Communication in the main phase of the algorithm is based on an all-to-all broadcast algorithm on the n link-disjoint Hamiltonian cycles exploiting all network channels, and thus, resulting in high-efficiency in using network resources. A performance evaluation of the proposed algorithm reveals an optimum speedup for a typical range of system parameters used... 

Segmentation of the human airway tree from volumetric computed tomography images is an important stage for many clinical applications such as virtual bronchoscopy. The main challenges of previously developed methods are to deal with two problems namely, leaking into the surrounding lung parenchyma during segmentation and the need to manually adjust the parameters. To overcome these problems, a multi-seeded fuzzy based region growing approach in conjuction with the spatial information of voxels is proposed. Comparison with a commonly used region growing segmentation algorithm shows that the proposed method retrieves more accurate results by achieving the specificity and sensitivity of 98.81%... 

Steganography is the art of hiding information in a cover media without attracting attention. One of the cover media which can be used for steganography is speech. In this paper, we propose a new speech steganography in wavelet domain. In this method, lifting scheme is used to create perfect reconstruction Int2Int wavelets. The data is hidden in some of the Least Significant Bits (LSB) of detail wavelet coefficients. The LSB bits for hiding are selected with a new adaptive algorithm. This algorithm does not hide information in silent parts, so there is no need for silent detection algorithms. This method has zero error in hiding/unhiding process, while normal wavelet domain LSB has about 0.2... 

In this paper, we propose a new noise robust algorithm for object tracking in the crowded video scenes. The algorithm exploits the properties of undecimated wavelet packet transform (UWPT) coefficients and texture analysis to track arbitrary objects. The coefficients of the UWPT of a user-specified region at the reference frame construct a Feature Vector (FV) for every pixel in that region. Optimal search for the best match of the region in successive frames is then performed by using the generated FVs inside an adaptive search window. Adaptation of the search window is achieved by inter-frame texture analysis to find the direction and speed of the object motion. Noise robustness has been... 

In this paper, a new algorithm for Sparse Component Analysis (SCA) in the noisy underdetermined case (i.e., with more sources than sensors) is presented. The solution obtained by the proposed algorithm is compared to the minimum l1 -norm solution achieved by Linear Programming (LP). Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is approximately 10 dB better than the LP method with respect to the quality of the estimated sources. It is due to optimality of our solution (in the MAP sense) for source recovery in noisy underdetermined sparse component analysis in the case of spiky model for sparse sources and Gaussian noise. © 2007 IEEE  

Peer to Peer networks have received considerable attention during the past decade and have been the focus of many research and development activities. New applications such as video streaming or gaming would benefit from multicast topologies and creating such trees in peer to peer networks is a challenging task. Proper multicast trees should minimize the traffic delay and bandwidth consumption. At the same time, construction of these trees should not be very complicated in terms of the required processing power so they can be implemented easily. The required time for construction of multicast trees should also be minimized and that helps with their adaptation to the dynamics of the network.... 

Voice activity detection is an important step in some speech processing systems, such as speech recognition, speech enhancement, noise estimation, speech compression ... etc. In this paper a new voice activity detection algorithm based on wavelet transform is proposed. In this algorithm we use the energy in each sub band, and by two methods we extract feature vector from these values. Experimental results demonstrate advantage over different VAD methods. ©2008 IEEE  

Chi-square tests are vastly used for distinguishing random distributions, but extra care must be taken when using them on several independent variables. We noticed, the chisquare statistics, in some previous works, was computed half of its real value. Thus, to avoid possible future confusions, we formulize multiple-chi-square tests. To show the application of multiple-chi-square tests, we introduce two new tests and apply them to Trivium as a special case. These tests are modifications of ANF monomial test and, when applied to Trivium with the same number of rounds, the data complexity of them is roughly 24 times smaller than that of previous ANF monomial test  

Nowadays computational complexity of fast Walsh Hadamard transform and non-linearity for Boolean functions and large cryptographic substitution boxes is a major challenge of modern cryptography research on strengthening encryption schemes against linear and differential attacks. Time and memory complexities of the best existing algorithm for computing fast Walsh Hadamard transform and non-linearity for (Formula presented.) substitution boxes is (Formula presented.). This paper proposes three new innovation in acceleration methods that improve the computation time for paralleled Walsh matrix up to 68 folds and the evaluation time for non-linearity degree up to 1021 folds. These methods... 

Many theoretical-based comparison studies, relying on graph structural and algorithmic properties, have been conducted for the hypercube and the star graph. None of these studies, however, have considered real working conditions and implementation limits. We have compared the performance of the star and hypercube networks for different message lengths and number of virtual channels, and considered two implementation constraints, namely the constant bisection bandwidth and constant node pin-out. We use two accurate analytical models, already proposed for the star graph and hypercube, and implement the parameter changes imposed by technological implementation constraints. When no constraint is... 

Using an in-house developed software the signal level, the best server cells, and the amount of interference using standard propagation models are determined in a cellular environment. The program is also able to assign the frequency channels automatically to the TRXs taking into account the carrier to interference and the traffic distribution using a genetic algorithm. In this paper, the cost function is based on the total Carrier to Interference ratio (C/I) and the traffic density of the serving area. The software by means of a genetic algorithm approaches a frequency assignment which increases the overall quality of service throughout the cellular network. The package has been used in a...