The Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at Bengaluru campus organized a two-day national workshop on Trends and Developments in Signal Processing and Applications (TDSPA-13) during April 27-28, 2013.

Signal processing may be applied to sensor data, images, sound or electromagnetic radiation. Using applied mathematics and electrical engineering concepts, the signals, perhaps spatially varying, are analyzed with measurements over time.

“Overall, the workshop helped generate more interest in signal processing and inspired participants to work towards their interest area with renewed vigor,” stated Dr. Shikha Tripathi, Chairperson, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering.

On the first day of the workshop, Dr. Hema A. Murthy of IIT Madras addressed the delegates. Speaking on Group Delay Processing of Speech Signals, she stressed the need to exploit their potential for development of speech systems.

“Traditionally, information in speech signals is represented in terms of features derived from the short-time fourier analysis. In this analysis, features extracted from the magnitude of the Fourier Transform (FT) are considered, ignoring the phase component,” she remarked.

“Although the significance of the FT phase was highlighted in several studies over the past three decades, the features of the FT phase were not fully exploited due to difficulty in computing the phase and in processing the phase function. The information in the short-time FT phase function can be extracted by processing the derivative of the FT phase, i.e., the group delay function,” she added.

The work finds applications in areas such as speech and speaker recognition.

Another address was delivered by Lokesha H. of National Aerospace Laboratories, Bengaluru. Speaking about Active Noise Control (ANC), a signal processing solution for noise mitigation in aircrafts, he elaborated on how to measure noise and the effects of high-intensity noise.

“Not only is ANC used in aircraft cabins for filtering our noise to reduce disturbances, it is also used in infant incubators,” he noted.

Dr. Sitaram Ramachandrula from HP Labs dealt with various applications of speech and image processing and innovations made by his organization.

“Applications for signal processing based novel interaction concepts for increasing IT usage in India are Voice-Based-Interaction and Paper-Based-Interaction,” he explained.

Dr. Narayana Dutt from IISc, Bengaluru, focused on nonlinear processing techniques for the analysis of biomedical signals in his talk, making delegates aware of the role of Electroencephalography or recording of electrical activity along the scalp.

“The different types of dynamic states of the brain are eyes closed / eyes open, sleep stages and meditation,” he highlighted. Various types of brain signals processed and dynamics of the brain during various mental activities were highlighted.

“The retina has a vital role in the functioning of the eye. Glaucoma is one of the major reasons for blindness,” stated Dr. M. R. Bhatt of Forus Health Pvt Ltd., speaking on Retina Image – A glimpse into the diagnosis of chronic diseases and challenges in image analysis.

“The eyes are windows to the heart and the brain in the literal sense, as noting down activity of the eye can tell us about the health of the person,” he added.

Other eminent speakers included M. R. Keshorey from CAIR, DRDO; Charles Domnique from T. P. Vision; Manjunath V. Joshi from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar and Srevats Laxman from S. T. Microelectronics who together covered topics such as speech processing, music feature extraction using digital signal processing, applications of image processing and computer vision, DSP applications in video post-processing and demodulators.

Hands – on sessions led by Cranes Software professionals used TI DSP kits for real-time applications.

“All sessions inspired participants to inculcate the underlying concepts, rather than merely cramming up text book knowledge. On the whole, workshop delegates gave us very good feedback,” shared Dr. Shikha Tripathi, Chairperson, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering.

May 27, 2013
School of Engineering, Bengaluru