Past Events

Abstract: In this talk, I will present a novel blind image quality assessment (BIQA) algorithm inspired by the sparse representation of natural images in the human visual system (HVS). The hypothesis behind the proposed method is that the properties of natural images that afford their sparse representation are altered in the presence of distortion. The change in sparsity is quantified to show that it is indeed a measure of the unnaturalness or distortion in an image.

Abstract: The role of image quality assessment in tasks such as (i) the fusion of long wave infrared (LWIR) and visible images and (ii) face recognition in LWIR images has not been researched extensively from the natural scene statistics (NSS) perspective. For instance, even though there are several well-known measures that quantify the quality of fused images, there has been little work done on analyzing the statistics of fused LWIR and visible images and associated distortions.

Today's era of cloud computing is powered by massive data centers. A data center network enables the exchange of data in the form of packets among the servers within these data centers. Given the size of today's data centers, it is desirable to design low-complexity scheduling algorithms which result in a fixed average packet delay, independent of the size of the data center. We consider the scheduling problem in an input-queued switch, which is a good abstraction for a data center network.

Combinatorial design theory has its roots in recreational mathematics and is concerned with the arrangement of the elements of a finite set into subsets, such that the collection of subsets has certain “nice” properties. In this talk we shall demonstrate that interpreting designs in the right manner yields improved solutions for distributed storage and content caching and novel impossibility results for distributed function computation.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects ‘things’. The connectivity requirements of the things depend heavily on the application. In this talk, we focus on the use cases that require low power consumption, long battery life, and are characterized by low duty cycle and massive number of low cost devices. This talk is divided into two parts. In the first part, we focus on Narrowband IoT system for low power cellular connectivity, and in the second part, we discuss ambient re-scatter communications that allow extreme low power short range connectivity.

Everyone has some experience of solving jigsaw puzzles. When facing ambiguities of assembling a pair of pieces, a common strategy we use is to look at clues from additional pieces and make decisions among all relevant pieces together. In this talk, I will show how to apply this common practice to develop data-driven algorithms that significantly outperform pair-wise algorithms. I will start with describing a computation framework for the joint inference of correspondences among shape/image collections.

This talk will present recent work from the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab.

Abstract: This talk will present a number of candidate technologies for vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communications. In more detail it will describe 802.11p and LTE applied for vehicular applications. The effect of vehicle speed, packet size and antenna correlation will be described. Simulation and emulation results will be presented. Then we will consider the challenges and opportunities of mmWave for vehicular communications.

This talk surveys the state-of-the art in RFID, energy-harvesting sensors, and devices for the Internet of Things.  Everything you know about wireless communications will be challenged, as we discuss ultra-low energy RF devices, bizarre forms of modulation, ``smart’’ antennas that do not require power, and undulating waveforms that extend the physical limits of RF energy-harvesting.  We present the engineering breakthroughs of today that will lead to real Sci-Fi applications of tomorrow:  peel-and-stick radio sensors that last forever, mm-scale wireless location capability, and

Abstract: How much of space can be filled with pairwise non-overlapping copies of a given solid? This is one of the oldest problems in mathematics, intriguing since the times of Aristotle, and remaining remarkably elusive until present times.