Sharif Digital Repository

Earthquakes are one of the greatest natural hazards. Hazard mitigation requires studies in many areas including geotechnical aspects of earthquake engineering. Characteristics of seismic waves change significantly as they pass through soft soil layers near the earth's surface. This phenomenon, commonly known as site effects or site response, is a major factor influencing the extent of damage on structures. Processing of seismic data recorded during earthquakes is one of the most reliable methods to study site effects. The ground motions generated during earthquakes are nonstationary with respect to both amplitude and frequency. The state-of-the-art time-frequency distributions when applied... 

In this thesis, we investigate the statistical performance of the array processing algorithms. Theoretical performance analysis leads to better methods that outperform the existing algorithms. Besides, analytical performance analysis, results in a more profound understanding of the nature of the considered problem. First of all, problem of covariance matrix estimation, in the non-Gaussian signal case will be investigated. We will focus on a nonparametric estimator which relies on the sign of the data to estimate the covariance matrix on an element-by-element basis. It was known that, sign estimator may give invalid covariance estimates in higher dimensions of the data. We prove this fact in... 

The main purpose of the thesis is Digital image Processing using the sparsity of image. The issue could be described in two ways. First is reconstruction of missed blocks of an image based on the sparsity of image in the transform domain and second is impulsive noise removal using the sparsity of noise in the spatial domain. In the first approach we will review Guleryuz method and simulate and analyze it. In the second approach, two new methods named RDE and Knockout will be introduced. These methods try two remove the impulsive noise of an image using its sparseness. RDE method is a development of conventional methods, but Knockout has a completely new idea. We will show that Knockout is... 

The aim of this project is designing and implementation of a BCI for interacting with virtual environments. BCI is an interface between brain and computer that connect those by translating brain signals into understandable instruction for computer. There are different ways to generate brain states for classification in BCI technology. One of those, is based on motor imagery (MI). In this project, we used motor imagery of left hand, right hand and foot. subject training in this kind of BCI (MI-based BCI) is very vital. in order to speed up subject training period and consequently enhance the separability of brain states, computer graphics and virtual environments are used to excite the... 

In this thesis we have investigated and improved the signal processing techniques which are used for monitoring the heart abnormalities in terms of ECG (ElectroCardioGram) signals in order to detect heart attacks before they occur. De-noising ECG signals are one of the most important research topics in computer and electrical engineering fields. There are many different algorithms for de-noising signals in various domains. It usually is needed to propose a suitable algorithm for each specific system. In some cases instead of developing a new algorithm, we could modify the available ones for de-noising in our system. ECG signals are output from an electrocardiograph which measures electrical... 

Adaptive beamforming performance is very sensitive to any mismatch between actual and presumed steering vectors of desired signal. In addition to this sensitivity, presence of desired signal in training snapshots dramatically reduces the convergence rate, as compared to the case that signal-free training snapshots are available.
The present work is aimed at proposing a new adaptive beamformer that is robust against direction-of-arrival (DOA) mismatch and has high convergence rate. This method is based on desired signal elimination from training snapshots and sub-array beamforming technique. To this end, a Blocking matrix that converts primary data to desired signal free data is... 

Poorly damped Low Frequency electromechanical Oscillations (LFOs) confine the capability of power system transmission lines. This phenomenon, which is the result of dynamic interactions among generator groups, may make the system prone to small- signal instability in some cases. Due to the use of some system controllers such as AVRs, these oscillations are inevitable.
Hence, electromechanical modes detection and assessing stability margin are important requirement in power system planning and operation, and can provide significant help to power system operators by preventing stability problems.
From the distant past, in order to monitor small-signal stability, power system operators... 

Recently, there has been much interest in sparse channel estimation, i.e. recovering a channel which has much less non zero tabs than its length. These channels have been observed in underwater and broadband wireless channels. In the last few years methods available to estimate these channels have used sparse structure information to improve the estimates. However, these methods are vulnerable to noise and interference. In other words, these methods do not use channel posterior information obtained from the received signal and this is detrimental to the estimator performance. In order to solve these problems in this thesis, motivated by CoSAMP algorithm which is a sparse signal processing... 

Direction Of Arrival (DOA) estimation or direction finding refers to determining the arrival angle of a planar wave impinging on the array of sensors or antennas. The DOA information can be used by the smart antenna system for beam-forming and reliable data transmission. The problem of DOA estimation in propagating plane waves played a fundamental role in many applications including acoustic, wireless communication systems, navigation, biomedical imaging, radar/sonar systems, seismic sensing, and wireless 911 emergency call locating. In the conventional DOA estimating systems, an array of elements (antennas or sensors) is used that are colocated in a uniform pattern called, Uniform Linear... 

A Brain–Computer Interface is a system that provides a direct pathway for communication between a brain and a computer device by processing signals from sensors measuring brain activity (here Electroencephalography signals). Brain signals are known to be stochastic, non-stationary, non-linear and highly noisy, Therfore Brain–Computer Interface Systems rely on signal preprocessing, feature extraction and use of machine learning methods in order to detect mental state of Brain–Computer Interface user. Current approaches addressing the problem are mainly based on supervised learning methods. In this Thesis, first some of freely obtainable datasets with motor or motor-imagery paradigms are... 

white noise or an innovation process through an all-pole filter. Applications of these processes include speech processing, RADAR signals and stock market data modeling. There exists an extensive research material on the AR processes with Gaussian innovation, however studies about the non-Gaussian case have been much more limited, while in many applications the asymptotic behavior of the signal is non-Gaussian. Non-Gaussian processes have an advantage over Gaussian ones in being capable of modeling sparsity. Assuming an appropriate non-Gaussian innovation one can suggest a more realistic description of sparse signals and predict their behavior or estimate their unknown values successfully.... 

Split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) test is one of the tests used for characterizing the mechanical behavior of materials at high strain rates between and s -1. A SHPB test consists of a gas gun, a striker bar, an incident bar, a transmission bar and a specimen which is sandwiched between the incident and transmission bars. In order to achieve constant strain rate during the test which is necessary in SHPB test, the incident pulse should obey the stress-strain curve of the specimen. For shaping the incident pulse usually a thin deformable disk -called pulse shaper- is placed between the striker and incident bars. In this thesis, first we designed, implemented and calibrated the measuring... 

The use of multiple sensors that produce different physical parameters of the measured system for its health monitoring raises the reliability of the diagnosis. At the moment, the fault detection capacities of ball bearings by means of proximity probe are detected by exploiting the advantages and reducing its defects by appropriate signal processing of the raw data in the time domain. Also, the application of numerical derivation and integration to achieve to the desired frequency spectrum in defect detection is investigated. A set of experiments with different sizes of internal ring, outer ring and ball defects, four levels of speed and two load levels have been performed. Data acquisition... 

Reservoir Computing is a novel computing paradigm that uses a nonlinear recurrent dynamical system to carry out information processing. Recent electronic and optoelectronic Reservoir Computers based on an architecture with a single nonlinear node and a delay loop have shown performance on standardized tasks comparable to state-of-the-art digital implementations. Here we report an all-optical implementation of a Reservoir Computer, made of off-the-shelf components for optical telecommunications. It uses a semiconductor optical amplifier as nonlinearity, and a Fabry-Perot Resonator as a key element to establish the virtual nodes, connecting them and consequently, build the virtual neural... 

The brain-computer interface is an advanced technology in human-machine interaction. The Speller system is a typical use of BCI, in which the target stimulation is detected by the induced signal in the brain. The most commonly speller system, the matrix Speller, has a major disadvantage, and it is Gaze-dependent. Research has proven that target-character selection in the matrix Speller is dependent on eye movement, or as referred to in technical terminology, it is gaze dependent. Therefore, the Speller matrix is not usable for users suffering from unimpaired oculomotor control. Many researchers attempted to overcome this issue, and their results led to two solutions; 1) changing the type of... 

With quick development of inexpensive video acquisition tools, fast progress of digital technology and growing availability of video editing software tools, editing and tampering of video signal has become easy and straightforward. This fact highlights the need for tools and methods that recover the editing history of digital data which has, for instance, motivated a joint project between several European universities and institutions called REWIND. Our main goal in this thesis is the blind (partial) detection of editing history for video signals without access to the original signal. The video is processed in the acquisition, coding and editing phases. Our focus in this thesis is on the... 

Adaptive vibration control of a structure under different condition of exciting forces or structural response is the main scope of this research.Using a combination of the pole placement and online Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) methods, a new algorithm is proposed for adaptive active control of structural vibration. For this purpose, by structural response which is evaluated from Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) and using prior knowledge for corresponding conditions, proper and optimum control forces are applied to structure. Hence, error sources of EMD method in the HHT such as end effects error, mode mixing problem and decomposition resolution are being studied. A modified method based... 

Image compression is a noteworthy problem in image processing field. Transform coding provides a scheme to confront the image compression problem. The discrete cosine transform (DCT) is used in the majority of image compression standards by transform coding. The DCT can efficiently represent smooth signals, but it becomes inefficient when the image contains arbitrary-shaped discontinuities. As an example, piecewise-smooth images (i.e., an image that contains multiple smooth areas separated with arbitrary-shaped boundaries), which are widely used in 3-dimensional image representation, cannot well represent by the DCT. Therefore, replacing the DCT with an adaptive transform can improve image... 

Ultrafast signal processing in time-domain with high resolution and reconfigura-bility is a challenging task. This paper, for the first time, introduces a time-varying metasurface consisting of graphene microribbon array for implementing time-lens in the terahertz domain. Given that the surface conductivity of graphene is proportional to the Fermi energy level in the THz regime, it is possible to change the phase property of the incident electromagnetic pulse by changing the Fermi level while the Fermi level itself is a function of voltage. Upon this fact, a quadratic temporal phase modulator, namely time-lens has been realized. This phase modulation is applied to the impinging signal in the... 

Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is used in a wide range of applications such as high-definition TV, digital audio, multimedia, digital cameras, radar, sonar detectors, biomedical imaging, global positioning, digital radio, speech recognition and etc. These applications can be implemented by either DSP processors or FPGA technology. Digital Signal Processors are microprocessors specifically designed to handle Digital Signal Processing tasks. These devices have seen a tremendous growth in the last decade, finding use in everything from cellular telephones to advanced scientific instruments. On the other hand, the rise of FPGA in the signal processing realm could be assigned to hardware to...