Telecommunications and

Signal Processing at
UT Austin

Prof. Brian L. Evans

http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~bevans

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1084

http://www.ece.utexas.edu
 Outline
• Introduction

• Wireline Communications speaker phones, ADSL modems

• Wireless Communications base stations, video cell phones

• Raster Image Processing printers, copiers, next-generation fax

• Power Quality Assessment next-generation power meters

• Computer Architecture high-performance processors

• Conclusion
 Telecommunications & Signal Processing Faculty
• Signal and Image Processing • Networking
– J. K. Aggarwal image, vision, ATR – Ross Baldick Internet pricing
– Alan Bovik image, video, vision – Bill Bard (adjunct) security, TCP/IP
– Brian Evans real-time DSP software – Gustavo de Veciana performance
– Joydeep Ghosh neural networks – Takis Konstantopoulos analysis
– Margarida Jacome DSP architecture – San-qi Li ATM networks/switches
– Lizy John DSP architecture – Scott Nettles active networks
– Thomas Milner biomedical imaging • Systems and Controls
– John Pearce biomedical imaging – Aristotle Araposthatis stochastic
– Irwin Sandberg nonlinear systems – Robert Flake manufacturing
– Earl Swartzlander VLSI DSP – Baxter Womack machine learning
• Wireless Communications • Speech and Audio Processing
– Hao Ling propagation, E911 – Mark Hamilton (ME) audio/acoustics
– Edward Powers satellite – Randy Diehl (Psychology) speech
– Guanghan Xu smart antennas – Russell Pinkston (Music) synthesis

http://www.ece.utexas.edu/telecom/faculty.html
Telecommunications & Signal Processing Courses
Area Graduate Courses Undergraduate Courses
Audio and Acoustics  Acoustics I  Noise and Vibration Control
 Digital Signal Processing
 Linear Systems and Signals
Digital Signal Processing  Advanced Signal Processing
 Digital Signal Processing
 Signal Compression
 Digital Communications  Probability, Statistics, Random Processes
Communications  Wireless Communications  Communication Systems
 Advanced Probability and Random Processes  Intro. to Digital Communications
 Communication Networks: Tech., Arch., Protocols  Intro. to Telecommunication Networks
Networking  Communication Networks: Analysis & Design  Networking Engineering Laboratory
 Advanced Telecommunication Networks  Distributed Information Security
Image and  Multidimensional Digital Signal Processing
Multidimensional Signal  Digital Image Processing
Processing  Biomedical Image Processing

 Application-Specific Processing  Microprocessor Programming

 Superscalar Microprocessor Architecture  Microprocessor Applications/Organization
Embedded Systems  High-Level Synthesis  Microprocessor Interfacing Lab
 Embedded Software Systems  Real-Time DSP Laboratory
 Hardware/Software Codesign  Computer Architecture
Neural Networks  Data Mining  Introduction to Neural Networks

Yellow underlined: four courses using TI DSPs

Green italics: three courses using Motorola microcontrollers
 Undergraduate Telecommunications Laboratories
• Three Microprocessor Laboratories (Lipovski and Valvano)
– Topics: microcomputer organization, modular programming in C and assembly,
interfacing, real-time software, data acquisition, communication, control
– Laboratory: develop software on and interface hardware to Motorola MC68HC11 and
MC68HC12 microcontroller boards
– Enrollment: 500 per year
• Real-time Digital Signal Processing Laboratory (Evans)
– Topics: digital signal processing, data conversion, digital communications, DSP
architecture, real-time software, ADSL modems
– Laboratory: build a voiceband modem on TMS320C30 EVM in C and DSP assembly
language using Code Composer
– Enrollment: 100 per year
• Network Engineering Laboratory (Bard)
– Topics: ATM, TCP/IP, Ethernet, routers, switches, firewalls, servers, security
– Laboratory: configure Cisco equipment and PCs to create/analyze network services
– Enrollment: 20 per year (limited by space)
 Touchtone Decoding for Speaker Phones
• Problem: Algorithms based on 1209 Hz 1336 Hz 1477 Hz 1633 Hz

the Fourier transform cannot 697 Hz 1 2 3 A

meet ITU Q.24 specifications 770 Hz 4 5 6 B

• Goal: Develop first ITU- 852 Hz 7 8 9 C

compliant touchtone detector 941 Hz * 0 # D

using 8-bit arithmetic ITU DTMF Specifications

• Solution: Nonlinear frequency Frequency Low Group  1.5%
Tolerance High Group  3.5%
estimation by zero crossings
Signal Operation 40 ms min
using Friedman interpolator Duration Non-operation 23 ms max
• Implementation: 5-MIP 8-bit Signal Pause Duration 40 ms max
Exceptions Signal Interruption 10 ms min
PIC16C711, 64 bytes data, 800 Twist Forward 8 dB
bytes program memory (1998) Reverse 4 dB
• Funding: Nat. Sci. Foundation
Wireline Communications (Evans)
 Touchtone Decoding for Central Offices
• Problem: Algorithms based on the Fourier
transform cannot meet ITU Q.24 specifications
S1
• Goal: Develop first ITU-compliant touchtone
decoder on a single DSP for a T1/E1 line
S2 S3
• Solution: Multiresolution algorithm (1997)
– Sliding windows of 106 and 212 samples to meet both
ITU frequency and timing specs (106 samples = 13.3 ms) S4
– Signal analysis to provide power level and talk-off checks
FSM
– Finite state machine (FSM) to enforce ITU specifications
– UT Austin filed a patent application on April 3, 1998, on the detector (30 claims)
• Implementation: To decode 24 (32) voice channels of a T1 (E1)
line: 17 (22) DSP MIPS, 800 data words, 1100 (1500) program
words: 30-MIP TI C54, 16 kw RAM, 4 kw ROM (1998)
• Funding: UT Austin
Wireline Communications (Evans)
 Improving Performance of ADSL Modems
• Problem: Equalizer design
Window where the shortened
– Is computationally complex impulse response is allowed to
be non-zero
– Does not maximize bit rate Original channel

• Goal: Design time-domain impulse response

equalizer to maximize bit rate

• Solution: Model signal, noise,
Impulse response
ISI paths in equalized channel after shortening

– Derive cost function for ISI power

as a function of equalizer taps
– Solve constrained quadratic optimization problem to minimize ISI power
• Implementation: Suboptimal method weights ISI power in freq.
– Achieves 98% of channel capacity with 2 taps not 17 (500x complexity reduction)
– Achieves up to 18% more bit rate for same number of taps for ADSL channels
• Funding: None (Motorola contacts: Sayfe Kiaei, Jim Kosmach)
Wireline Communications (Evans)
 Wireless Base Station Design
• Problem: Mobile wireless services
hampered by cochannel interference,
multipath effects, fading, and noise
• Goal: Increase system quality and
capacity through spatial diversity
• Solution: Base station smart antennas Narrow Band Testbed (1.8 GHz)
• Implementation #1: First university smart antenna testbed (1993)
– Characterize wireless channels & test smart antenna algorithms: 1.5 GHz, 900 MHz
• Implementation #2: Real-time narrow band testbed (1997)
– Mobile: 2 30-MIP DSPs for speech codec
– Base: 16 A/Ds, D/As, DSPs; 2 33-MIP DSPs baseband
– Funding: GE, Motorola, Raytheon TI, DoD (ONR/JSEP)
• Implementation #3: Wide band testbed (now)
– Analog/IF baseband goes from 0.5 to 5 MHz
– Funding: SBC, State of Texas, Nat. Science Foundation TX/RX Circuit Board
Wireless Communications (Xu & Ling)
 H.263 Video Cell Phone Implementation
• Problem: Motion compensation takes Cycle counts
80% of computation in H.263 encoder Sum-of-absolute differences
20000
• Goal: Real-time H.263 codec on DSPs
15000
• Solution: Handcode sum-of-absolute
differences for two 16 x 16 subblocks 10000
– 9.2 : 1 speedup on C62x over C implementation 5000
with all compiler optimizations enabled
0
• Implementation: Modify H.263 codec

C -O3
C -O1
C -O2
C code

Our code
in C from Univ. of British Columbia
– TI’s DCT/IDCT gives speedup of 2.7/2.3
– Overall speedup of 4:1 – 10 QCIF (176 x 142) frames/s on 300 MHz C67x
• Funding: TI, State of Texas (started 1/15/00)
– Motorola contact: Dana Taipale

Wireless Communications (Bovik & Evans)

 Improving H.263 Video Cell Phone Performance
• Problem: Controlling transmission rate,
buffer size, and subjective quality
• Goal: Use nonuniform sampling of fovea
– Resolution on retina falls off 1/r2 away from fovea
– Need point(s) of focus for observer(s)
• Solutions: Foveation points are estimated
 id dx 
1
or obtained by eye tracker ex  tan  
– Preprocessing: apply spatially-varying linear filter  ip vd 
with cutoff freq. proportional to local bandwidth
– Modify encoder: foveation simplifies motion est.
• Implementation: Demo available at
http://pineapple.ece.utexas.edu/class/Video/demo.html
• Funding: Same project as previous slide

Wireless Communications (Bovik & Evans)

 Improving Image Quality in Printers and Copiers
• Problem: Halftoning (binarizing images for printing) introduces
linear distortion, nonlinear distortion, and additive noise
• Goal: Develop low-complexity high-quality halftoning algorithms
• Solution: Model quantizer as gain plus noise (1997-present)
– Halftone quality: edge sharpness (quantizer gain) and noise (noise transfer function)
– Inverse halftones: blurring and spatially-varying noise
• Funding: HP, National Science Foundation, UT Austin

Original Image Halftoned Image Inverse Halftone

Raster Image Processing (Evans)
 Next-Generation Fax Machines
• Problem: Fast algorithms for high-quality JBIG2 compression of
halftones (JBIG2 standard adopted in April 2000 by ITU-T)
• Goal: Develop low-complexity
encoding algorithms with
good rate-distortion tradeoffs
• Solution: Filter, descreen, error
diffuse, quantize (1999-present)
– Use small symmetric FIR prefilter Original
Compressed (5:1)
to reduce noise before descreening
– Modify error diffusion: reduce gray levels & sharpening and trade off rate-distortion
– Measures of subjective quality based to rank encoding methods
• Funding: National Science Foundation, UT Austin

Raster Image Processing (Evans)

 Next-Generation Power Meters
• Problem: A power quality disturbance can result in a loss of
$0.5M to $2.0M in semiconductor industry (Dennis Johnson, TI,
5/3/2000, Texas Electrical Power Quality Workshop, UT Austin)
– Disturbance: deviation from constant amplitude, freq. and phase in voltage/current
– Deregulation: different providers of power generation, transmission, and
distribution
• Goal: Detect/classify transient power quality disturbances
Signal Analysis Classification
• Solution: Methods (1993-present) Methods Methods
Linear prediction Neural network
– Detect voltage sag, capacitance switching, Wavelets (6 scales) Rule-based
and impulsive events in presence of noise Teager operator Hidden Markov
– Characterize statistics by constant false Wigner operator models
alarm rate detectors to set thresholds
• Implementation: DSPs for future power meters and fault recorders
• Funding: Electric Power Research Institute, State of Texas, TXU
Power Quality (Powers & Grady)
 High-Performance Microarchitecture
• Problem: How to harness larger and larger numbers of transistors
on a chip on behalf of higher performance processing
• Goal: Develop microarchitectures to improve performance
• Solution #1: Four-wide issue general-purpose processor (1984)
– 1984: everyone laughed at it
– 1996: everyone is doing it Current Research
• Solution #2: Two-level branch Trace cache optimization
predictor (1991) Subordinate simultaneous
– 1995: Intel first to adopt it (PentiumPro) microthreading
– 2000: widely used as top-of-line predictor Low-power implementations
• Funding: AMD, HAL Computer, Application-specific high-
performance coprocessors
IBM, Intel, Motorola

Computer Architecture (Patt)

 Conclusion
• UT ECE Department
62 full-time faculty, 1730 undergraduates, 570 graduate students
• UT ECE R&D in telecommunications and signal processing
22 full-time faculty, 300 undergraduates, 200 graduate students
• Leader in several telecommunication and signal processing R&D
areas for high-volume products using digital signal processors
– Wireline communications (touchtone detectors)
– Wireless communications (wireless base stations and video cell phones)
– Raster image processing (printers, copiers, and fax machines)
– Power quality assessment (next-generation power meters and fault recorders)
– Computer architecture (high-performance processors and coprocessors)
 ADSL Modems
• Multicarrier modulation: Decompose channel into subchannels
– Standardized for ADSL (ANSI 1.413) and proposed for VDSL
– Implemented by the fast Fourier transform (FFT): efficient DSP implementation
• Cyclic prefix: Append guard period to each symbol
– Receiver has a time-domain equalizer to shorten effective channel length to be less than
the cyclic prefix length to reduce intersymbol interference (ISI)
– Helps receiver perform symbol synchronization
magnitude

channel frequency response

a carrier

a subchannel

Appendix: Wireline Communications frequency

 ITU-T H.263 Video Encoder
Coding control
Control info

2-D Q VLC
- DCT
Video in
Quantizer index
Q-1 for transform
DCT = Discrete Cosine Transform
MCP = Motion Compensation coefficient
VLC = Variable Length Coding 2-D
IDCT

MCP
VLC

Motion vectors

Appendix: Wireless Communications

 Model Based Image Quality Assessment
• Problem: Develop quality measures to quantify the performance
of image restoration algorithms
• Goal : Decouple linear distortion and noise injection
• Solution:
– Modeled degradation as spatially varying blur and additive noise
– Developed distortion measure to quantify linear distortion
– Developed Non-linear Quality Measure (NQM) for additive uncorrelated noise

White noise added Filtered

white noise added
SNR=10.00dB SNR=10.00dB
NQM=20.47dB NQM=32.65dB

Appendix: Raster Image Processing (Evans)

 Adaptive Algorithms for Image Halftoning
• Problem: Low-complexity adaptive algorithm to minimize
nonlinear and linear distortion in digital halftoning
• Goal : Threshold modulation method to preserve sharpness of
original (a.k.a. what-you-see-is-what-you-get halftone)
• Solution:
– Minimize linear distortion: develop a framework for adaptive threshold modulation
– Reduce nonlinear distortion: use a deterministic bit flipping (DBF) quantizer to
eliminate limit cycles

F(t1,t2,…,tn)

+ +
+ DBF
+
Error +
filter
Greyscale image WYSIWYG halftone
Appendix: Raster Image Processing (Evans)
 Speaker Localization Using Neural Networks
• Problem: Estimate speaker location
Far
(applications in videoconferencing Field
and acoustic echo cancellation)
• Goal: Develop low-cost speaker Near n
location estimator for microphone Field
f
array that works in far and near fields r

• Solution: Neural network

– Train multilayer perceptron off-line with
normalized instantaneous cross-power spectrum
samples as feature vectors (4 input nodes, 10 hidden nodes, and 1 output node)
– Using more than four microphones gives diminishing returns
– Less than 6º average error for modeled speech
– Massively parallel with possible fixed-point implementation
• Implementation: 1 MFLOPS/s for 4 microphones at 8 kHz, 16 bits
Appendix: Speech Processing (Evans)
 Multi-Criteria Analog/Digital IIR Filter Design
• Problem: Optimize multiple filter behavioral and implementation
characteristics simultaneously for analog and digital IIR filters
• Goal: Develop an extensible, automated framework
• Solution: Filter optimization packages for Mathematica
– Solve constrained nonlinear optimization using Sequential Quadratic Programming:
converges to global optimum and robust when closed-form gradients provided
– Program Mathematica to derive formulas for cost function, constraints, and gradients,
and synthesize formulas as Matlab programs to run optimization
• Analog example: linearize phase, minimize overshoot, max Q  10
Linearized phase in passband Minimized peak overshoot

Original
Optimized

http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~bevans/projects/syn_filter_software.html
Appendix: Filter Optimization (Evans)