Sensors

Research

Jump to: Review, Other

32 pages, 3513 KiB

Open AccessArticle

EEG-Based Emotion Recognition Using Quadratic Time-Frequency Distribution

by Rami Alazrai, Rasha Homoud, Hisham Alwanni and Mohammad I. Daoud

Sensors 2018, 18(8), 2739; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18082739 - 20 Aug 2018

Cited by 98 | Viewed by 9101

Abstract

Accurate recognition and understating of human emotions is an essential skill that can improve the collaboration between humans and machines. In this vein, electroencephalogram (EEG)-based emotion recognition is considered an active research field with challenging issues regarding the analyses of the nonstationary EEG [...] Read more.

Accurate recognition and understating of human emotions is an essential skill that can improve the collaboration between humans and machines. In this vein, electroencephalogram (EEG)-based emotion recognition is considered an active research field with challenging issues regarding the analyses of the nonstationary EEG signals and the extraction of salient features that can be used to achieve accurate emotion recognition. In this paper, an EEG-based emotion recognition approach with a novel time-frequency feature extraction technique is presented. In particular, a quadratic time-frequency distribution (QTFD) is employed to construct a high resolution time-frequency representation of the EEG signals and capture the spectral variations of the EEG signals over time. To reduce the dimensionality of the constructed QTFD-based representation, a set of 13 time- and frequency-domain features is extended to the joint time-frequency-domain and employed to quantify the QTFD-based time-frequency representation of the EEG signals. Moreover, to describe different emotion classes, we have utilized the 2D arousal-valence plane to develop four emotion labeling schemes of the EEG signals, such that each emotion labeling scheme defines a set of emotion classes. The extracted time-frequency features are used to construct a set of subject-specific support vector machine classifiers to classify the EEG signals of each subject into the different emotion classes that are defined using each of the four emotion labeling schemes. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated using a publicly available EEG dataset, namely the DEAPdataset. Moreover, we design three performance evaluation analyses, namely the channel-based analysis, feature-based analysis and neutral class exclusion analysis, to quantify the effects of utilizing different groups of EEG channels that cover various regions in the brain, reducing the dimensionality of the extracted time-frequency features and excluding the EEG signals that correspond to the neutral class, on the capability of the proposed approach to discriminate between different emotion classes. The results reported in the current study demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed QTFD-based approach in recognizing different emotion classes. In particular, the average classification accuracies obtained in differentiating between the various emotion classes defined using each of the four emotion labeling schemes are within the range of

73.8 %

–

86.2 %

. Moreover, the emotion classification accuracies achieved by our proposed approach are higher than the results reported in several existing state-of-the-art EEG-based emotion recognition studies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 4778 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Joint Design of Space-Time Transmit and Receive Weights for Colocated MIMO Radar

by Ze Yu, Shusen Wang, Wei Liu and Chunsheng Li

Sensors 2018, 18(8), 2722; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18082722 - 18 Aug 2018

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4673

Abstract

Compared with single-input multiple-output (SIMO) radar, colocated multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar can detect moving targets better by adopting waveform diversity. When the colocated MIMO radar transmits a set of orthogonal waveforms, the transmit weights are usually set equal to one, and the receive [...] Read more.

Compared with single-input multiple-output (SIMO) radar, colocated multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar can detect moving targets better by adopting waveform diversity. When the colocated MIMO radar transmits a set of orthogonal waveforms, the transmit weights are usually set equal to one, and the receive weights are adaptively adjusted to suppress clutter based on space-time adaptive processing technology. This paper proposes the joint design of space-time transmit and receive weights for colocated MIMO radar. The approach is based on the premise that all possible moving targets are detected by setting a lower threshold. In each direction where there may be moving targets, the space-time transmit and receive weights can be iteratively updated by using the proposed approach to improve the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), which is helpful to improve the precision of target detection. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method improves the output SINR by greater than 13 dB. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Graphical abstract

10 pages, 923 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Gyroscope Bias Estimation Algorithm Based on Map Specific Information

by Tian Tan, Ao Peng, Junjun Huang, Lingxiang Zheng and Gang Ou

Sensors 2018, 18(8), 2534; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18082534 - 2 Aug 2018

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4219

Abstract

In an inertial navigation system, especially in a pedestrian dead-reckoning system, gyroscope bias can demonstrably reduce positioning accuracy. A novel gyroscope bias estimation algorithm is proposed, which estimates the bias of a gyroscope under any set of angle observations. Moreover, a method for [...] Read more.

In an inertial navigation system, especially in a pedestrian dead-reckoning system, gyroscope bias can demonstrably reduce positioning accuracy. A novel gyroscope bias estimation algorithm is proposed, which estimates the bias of a gyroscope under any set of angle observations. Moreover, a method for obtaining Euler angles using map corridor information is proposed. The heading information obtained from a map is used to estimate the bias, and the estimated bias is used to correct the trajectories. Experimental results show that it is feasible for the algorithm to estimate the bias of the gyroscope. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 1928 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multiday EMG-Based Classification of Hand Motions with Deep Learning Techniques

by Muhammad Zia ur Rehman, Asim Waris, Syed Omer Gilani, Mads Jochumsen, Imran Khan Niazi, Mohsin Jamil, Dario Farina and Ernest Nlandu Kamavuako

Sensors 2018, 18(8), 2497; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18082497 - 1 Aug 2018

Cited by 161 | Viewed by 12628

Abstract

Pattern recognition of electromyography (EMG) signals can potentially improve the performance of myoelectric control for upper limb prostheses with respect to current clinical approaches based on direct control. However, the choice of features for classification is challenging and impacts long-term performance. Here, we [...] Read more.

Pattern recognition of electromyography (EMG) signals can potentially improve the performance of myoelectric control for upper limb prostheses with respect to current clinical approaches based on direct control. However, the choice of features for classification is challenging and impacts long-term performance. Here, we propose the use of EMG raw signals as direct inputs to deep networks with intrinsic feature extraction capabilities recorded over multiple days. Seven able-bodied subjects performed six active motions (plus rest), and EMG signals were recorded for 15 consecutive days with two sessions per day using the MYO armband (MYB, a wearable EMG sensor). The classification was performed by a convolutional neural network (CNN) with raw bipolar EMG samples as the inputs, and the performance was compared with linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and stacked sparse autoencoders with features (SSAE-f) and raw samples (SSAE-r) as inputs. CNN outperformed (lower classification error) both LDA and SSAE-r in the within-session, between sessions on same day, between the pair of days, and leave-out one-day evaluation (p < 0.001) analyses. However, no significant difference was found between CNN and SSAE-f. These results demonstrated that CNN significantly improved performance and increased robustness over time compared with standard LDA with associated handcrafted features. This data-driven features extraction approach may overcome the problem of the feature calibration and selection in myoelectric control. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 9816 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fast Feature-Preserving Approach to Carpal Bone Surface Denoising

by Ibrahim Salim and A. Ben Hamza

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2379; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072379 - 21 Jul 2018

Viewed by 3930

Abstract

We present a geometric framework for surface denoising using graph signal processing, which is an emerging field that aims to develop new tools for processing and analyzing graph-structured data. The proposed approach is formulated as a constrained optimization problem whose objective function consists [...] Read more.

We present a geometric framework for surface denoising using graph signal processing, which is an emerging field that aims to develop new tools for processing and analyzing graph-structured data. The proposed approach is formulated as a constrained optimization problem whose objective function consists of a fidelity term specified by a noise model and a regularization term associated with prior data. Both terms are weighted by a normalized mesh Laplacian, which is defined in terms of a data-adaptive kernel similarity matrix in conjunction with matrix balancing. Minimizing the objective function reduces it to iteratively solve a sparse system of linear equations via the conjugate gradient method. Extensive experiments on noisy carpal bone surfaces demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in comparison with existing methods. We perform both qualitative and quantitative comparisons using various evaluation metrics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

24 pages, 1164 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Constrained Multi-Sensor Control Using a Multi-Target MSE Bound and a δ-GLMB Filter

by Feng Lian, Liming Hou, Jing Liu and Chongzhao Han

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2308; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072308 - 16 Jul 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3499

Abstract

The existing multi-sensor control algorithms for multi-target tracking (MTT) within the random finite set (RFS) framework are all based on the distributed processing architecture, so the rule of generalized covariance intersection (GCI) has to be used to obtain the multi-sensor posterior density. However, [...] Read more.

The existing multi-sensor control algorithms for multi-target tracking (MTT) within the random finite set (RFS) framework are all based on the distributed processing architecture, so the rule of generalized covariance intersection (GCI) has to be used to obtain the multi-sensor posterior density. However, there has still been no reliable basis for setting the normalized fusion weight of each sensor in GCI until now. Therefore, to avoid the GCI rule, the paper proposes a new constrained multi-sensor control algorithm based on the centralized processing architecture. A multi-target mean-square error (MSE) bound defined in our paper is served as cost function and the multi-sensor control commands are just the solutions that minimize the bound. In order to derive the bound by using the generalized information inequality to RFS observation, the error between state set and its estimation is measured by the second-order optimal sub-pattern assignment metric while the multi-target Bayes recursion is performed by using a δ-generalized labeled multi-Bernoulli filter. An additional benefit of our method is that the proposed bound can provide an online indication of the achievable limit for MTT precision after the sensor control. Two suboptimal algorithms, which are mixed penalty function (MPF) method and complex method, are used to reduce the computation cost of solving the constrained optimization problem. Simulation results show that for the constrained multi-sensor control system with different observation performance, our method significantly outperforms the GCI-based Cauchy-Schwarz divergence method in MTT precision. Besides, when the number of sensors is relatively large, the computation time of the MPF and complex methods is much shorter than that of the exhaustive search method at the expense of completely acceptable loss of tracking accuracy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 7274 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Real-Time Vehicle Roll Angle Estimation Based on Neural Networks in IoT Low-Cost Devices

by Javier García Guzmán, Lisardo Prieto González, Jonatan Pajares Redondo, Mat Max Montalvo Martínez and María Jesús L. Boada

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2188; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072188 - 7 Jul 2018

Cited by 27 | Viewed by 5585

Abstract

The high rate of vehicle-crash victims has a fatal economic and social impact in today’s societies. In particular, road crashes where heavy vehicles are involved cause more severe damage because they are prone to rollover. For this reason, many researches are focused on [...] Read more.

The high rate of vehicle-crash victims has a fatal economic and social impact in today’s societies. In particular, road crashes where heavy vehicles are involved cause more severe damage because they are prone to rollover. For this reason, many researches are focused on developing RSC Roll Stability Control (RSC) systems. Concerning the design of RSC systems with an adequate performance, it is mandatory to know the dynamics of the vehicle. The main problem arises from the lack of ability to directly capture several required dynamic vehicle variables, such as roll angle, from low-cost sensors. Previous studies demonstrate that low-cost sensors can provide data in real-time with the required precision and reliability. Even more, other research works indicate that neural networks are efficient mechanisms to estimate roll angle. Nevertheless, it is necessary to assess that the fusion of data coming from low-cost devices and estimations provided by neural networks can fulfill hard real-time processing constraints, achieving high level of accuracy during circulation of a vehicle in real situations. In order to address this issue, this study has two main goals: (1) Design and develop an IoT based architecture, integrating ANN in low cost kits with different hardware architectures in order to estimate under real-time constraints the vehicle roll angle. This architecture is able to work under high dynamic conditions, by following specific best practices and considerations during its design; (2) assess that the IoT architecture deployed in low-cost experimental kits achieve the hard real-time performance constraints estimating the roll angle with the required calculation accuracy. To fulfil these objectives, an experimental environment was set up, composed of a van with two set of low-cost kits, one including a Raspberry Pi 3 Model Band the other having an Intel Edison System on Chip linked to a SparkFun 9 Degrees of Freedom module. This experimental environment be tested in different maneuvers for comparison purposes. Neural networks embedded in low-cost sensor kits provide roll angle estimations highly approximated to real values. Even more, Intel Edison and Raspberry Pi 3 Model B have enough computing capabilities to successfully run roll angle estimation based on neural networks to determine rollover risk situations, fulfilling real-time operation restrictions stated for this problem. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

27 pages, 12541 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Computational Model of Watermark Algorithmic Robustness Capable of Resisting Image Cropping for Remote Sensing Images

by Deyu Tong, Na Ren, Wenzhong Shi and Changqing Zhu

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2096; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072096 - 29 Jun 2018

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3580

Abstract

Various watermarking algorithms have been studied to better enable the copyright protection of remote sensing images. The robustness of such algorithms against image cropping attacks has subsequently been verified mainly by various experiments. However, to date, the experimental results are subject to the [...] Read more.

Various watermarking algorithms have been studied to better enable the copyright protection of remote sensing images. The robustness of such algorithms against image cropping attacks has subsequently been verified mainly by various experiments. However, to date, the experimental results are subject to the differences in experimental factors and computational resource costs. Hence, the study presented in this paper proposes a robustness computation model of watermarking remote sensing images in terms of the image cropping attack. The robustness computation model consists of three parts: analysis principles, an evaluation index, and a computation method. The robustness analysis principles are provided based on the salient features of watermarking remote sensing images and attacking properties. A probability-based evaluation index is then defined to more comprehensively measure the robustness of different algorithms. The computation method developed in this study is based on permutations and the inclusion-exclusion principle to theoretically calculate robustness. The experiments conducted to verify the effectiveness of the computation model, revealed true closeness between both the calculated and experimental results. Finally, the relationships between the robustness and the different parameters used in the watermarking algorithms are investigated by using the proposed computation model. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Graphical abstract

13 pages, 2268 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Improved Visualization of Hydroacoustic Plumes Using the Split-Beam Aperture Coherence

by Ann E. A. Blomberg, Thomas C. Weber and Andreas Austeng

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2033; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072033 - 25 Jun 2018

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 4151

Abstract

Natural seepage of methane into the oceans is considerable, and plays a role in the global carbon cycle. Estimating the amount of this greenhouse gas entering the water column is important in order to understand their environmental impact. In addition, leakage from man-made [...] Read more.

Natural seepage of methane into the oceans is considerable, and plays a role in the global carbon cycle. Estimating the amount of this greenhouse gas entering the water column is important in order to understand their environmental impact. In addition, leakage from man-made structures such as gas pipelines may have environmental and economical consequences and should be promptly detected. Split beam echo sounders (SBES) detect hydroacoustic plumes due to the significant contrast in acoustic impedance between water and free gas. SBES are also powerful tools for plume characterization, with the ability to provide absolute acoustic measurements, estimate bubble trajectories, and capture the frequency dependent response of bubbles. However, under challenging conditions such as deep water and considerable background noise, it can be difficult to detect the presence of gas seepage from the acoustic imagery alone. The spatial coherence of the wavefield measured across the split beam sectors, quantified by the coherence factor (CF), is a computationally simple, easily available quantity which complements the acoustic imagery and may ease the ability to automatically or visually detect bubbles in the water column. We demonstrate the benefits of CF processing using SBES data from the Hudson Canyon, acquired using the Simrad EK80 SBES. We observe that hydroacoustic plumes appear more clearly defined and are easier to detect in the CF imagery than in the acoustic backscatter images. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

19 pages, 7560 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Case Study on Attribute Recognition of Heated Metal Mark Image Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

by Keming Mao , Duo Lu , Dazhi E and Zhenhua Tan

Sensors 2018, 18(6), 1871; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18061871 - 7 Jun 2018

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3228

Abstract

Heated metal mark is an important trace to identify the cause of fire. However, traditional methods mainly focus on the knowledge of physics and chemistry for qualitative analysis and make it still a challenging problem. This paper presents a case study on attribute [...] Read more.

Heated metal mark is an important trace to identify the cause of fire. However, traditional methods mainly focus on the knowledge of physics and chemistry for qualitative analysis and make it still a challenging problem. This paper presents a case study on attribute recognition of the heated metal mark image using computer vision and machine learning technologies. The proposed work is composed of three parts. Material is first generated. According to national standards, actual needs and feasibility, seven attributes are selected for research. Data generation and organization are conducted, and a small size benchmark dataset is constructed. A recognition model is then implemented. Feature representation and classifier construction methods are introduced based on deep convolutional neural networks. Finally, the experimental evaluation is carried out. Multi-aspect testings are performed with various model structures, data augments, training modes, optimization methods and batch sizes. The influence of parameters, recognitio efficiency and execution time are also analyzed. The results show that with a fine-tuned model, the recognition rate of attributes metal type, heating mode, heating temperature, heating duration, cooling mode, placing duration and relative humidity are 0.925, 0.908, 0.835, 0.917, 0.928, 0.805 and 0.92, respectively. The proposed method recognizes the attribute of heated metal mark with preferable effect, and it can be used in practical application. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

10 pages, 1892 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Design of Sparse FIR Decision Feedback Equalizers in MIMO Systems Using Hybrid l₁/l₂ Norm Minimization and the OMP Algorithm

by Lihong Yu, Jiaxiang Zhao, Wei Xu and Haiyuan Liu

Sensors 2018, 18(6), 1860; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18061860 - 6 Jun 2018

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3506

Abstract

In this paper, a novel scheme using hybrid l₁/l₂ norm minimization and the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) algorithm is proposed to design the sparse finite impulse response (FIR) decision feedback equalizers (DFE) in multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems. [...] Read more.

In this paper, a novel scheme using hybrid l₁/l₂ norm minimization and the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) algorithm is proposed to design the sparse finite impulse response (FIR) decision feedback equalizers (DFE) in multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems. To reduce the number of nonzero taps for the FIR DFE while ensuring its design accuracy, the problem of designing a sparse FIR DFE is transformed into an l₀ norm minimization problem, and then the proposed scheme is used to obtain the sparse solution. In the proposed scheme, a sequence of minimum weighted l₂ norm problems is solved using the OMP algorithm. The nonzero taps positions can be corrected with the different weights in the diagonal weighting matrix which is computed through the hybrid l₁/l₂ norm minimization. The simulation results verify that the sparse FIR MIMO DFEs designed by the proposed scheme get a significant reduction in the number of nonzero taps with a small performance loss compared to the non-sparse optimum DFE under the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion. In addition, the proposed scheme provides better design accuracy than the OMP algorithm with the same sparsity level. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

19 pages, 3642 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Automatic Detection and Classification of Audio Events for Road Surveillance Applications

by Noor Almaadeed, Muhammad Asim, Somaya Al-Maadeed, Ahmed Bouridane and Azeddine Beghdadi

Sensors 2018, 18(6), 1858; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18061858 - 6 Jun 2018

Cited by 54 | Viewed by 6180

Abstract

This work investigates the problem of detecting hazardous events on roads by designing an audio surveillance system that automatically detects perilous situations such as car crashes and tire skidding. In recent years, research has shown several visual surveillance systems that have been proposed [...] Read more.

This work investigates the problem of detecting hazardous events on roads by designing an audio surveillance system that automatically detects perilous situations such as car crashes and tire skidding. In recent years, research has shown several visual surveillance systems that have been proposed for road monitoring to detect accidents with an aim to improve safety procedures in emergency cases. However, the visual information alone cannot detect certain events such as car crashes and tire skidding, especially under adverse and visually cluttered weather conditions such as snowfall, rain, and fog. Consequently, the incorporation of microphones and audio event detectors based on audio processing can significantly enhance the detection accuracy of such surveillance systems. This paper proposes to combine time-domain, frequency-domain, and joint time-frequency features extracted from a class of quadratic time-frequency distributions (QTFDs) to detect events on roads through audio analysis and processing. Experiments were carried out using a publicly available dataset. The experimental results conform the effectiveness of the proposed approach for detecting hazardous events on roads as demonstrated by 7% improvement of accuracy rate when compared against methods that use individual temporal and spectral features. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 473 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Supervoxels-Based Histon as a New Alzheimer’s Disease Imaging Biomarker

by César A. Ortiz Toro, Consuelo Gonzalo-Martín, Angel García-Pedrero and Ernestina Menasalvas Ruiz

Sensors 2018, 18(6), 1752; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18061752 - 29 May 2018

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 8267

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) represents the prevalent type of dementia in the elderly, and is characterized by the presence of neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques that eventually leads to the loss of neurons, resulting in atrophy in specific brain areas. Although the process of [...] Read more.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) represents the prevalent type of dementia in the elderly, and is characterized by the presence of neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques that eventually leads to the loss of neurons, resulting in atrophy in specific brain areas. Although the process of degeneration can be visualized through various modalities of medical imaging and has proved to be a valuable biomarker, the accurate diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease remains a challenge, especially in its early stages. In this paper, we propose a novel classification method for Alzheimer’s disease/cognitive normal discrimination in structural magnetic resonance images (MRI), based on the extension of the concept of histons to volumetric images. The proposed method exploits the relationship between grey matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid degeneration by means of a segmentation using supervoxels. The calculated histons are then processed for a reduction in dimensionality using principal components analysis (PCA) and the resulting vector is used to train an support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Experimental results using the OASIS-1 database have proven to be a significant improvement compared to a baseline classification made using the pipeline provided by Clinica software. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

22 pages, 2530 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Maglev Train Signal Processing Architecture Based on Nonlinear Discrete Tracking Differentiator

by Zhiqiang Wang, Xiaolong Li, Yunde Xie and Zhiqiang Long

Sensors 2018, 18(6), 1697; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18061697 - 24 May 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 6170

Abstract

In a maglev train levitation system, signal processing plays an important role for the reason that some sensor signals are prone to be corrupted by noise due to the harsh installation and operation environment of sensors and some signals cannot be acquired directly [...] Read more.

In a maglev train levitation system, signal processing plays an important role for the reason that some sensor signals are prone to be corrupted by noise due to the harsh installation and operation environment of sensors and some signals cannot be acquired directly via sensors. Based on these concerns, an architecture based on a new type of nonlinear second-order discrete tracking differentiator is proposed. The function of this signal processing architecture includes filtering signal noise and acquiring needed signals for levitation purposes. The proposed tracking differentiator possesses the advantages of quick convergence, no fluttering, and simple calculation. Tracking differentiator’s frequency characteristics at different parameter values are studied in this paper. The performance of this new type of tracking differentiator is tested in a MATLAB simulation and this tracking-differentiator is implemented in Very-High-Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL). In the end, experiments are conducted separately on a test board and a maglev train model. Simulation and experiment results show that the performance of this novel signal processing architecture can fulfill the real system requirement. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

12 pages, 2405 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Angle Measurement of Objects outside the Linear Field of View of a Strapdown Semi-Active Laser Seeker

by Yongbin Zheng, Huimin Chen and Zongtan Zhou

Sensors 2018, 18(6), 1673; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18061673 - 23 May 2018

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 5209

Abstract

The accurate angle measurement of objects outside the linear field of view (FOV) is a challenging task for a strapdown semi-active laser seeker and is not yet well resolved. Considering the fact that the strapdown semi-active laser seeker is equipped with GPS and [...] Read more.

The accurate angle measurement of objects outside the linear field of view (FOV) is a challenging task for a strapdown semi-active laser seeker and is not yet well resolved. Considering the fact that the strapdown semi-active laser seeker is equipped with GPS and an inertial navigation system (INS) on a missile, in this work, we present an angle measurement method based on the fusion of the seeker’s data and GPS and INS data for a strapdown semi-active laser seeker. When an object is in the nonlinear FOV or outside the FOV, by solving the problems of space consistency and time consistency, the pitch angle and yaw angle of the object can be calculated via the fusion of the last valid angles measured by the seeker and the corresponding GPS and INS data. The numerical simulation results demonstrate the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

20 pages, 591 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Degree-of-Freedom Strengthened Cascade Array for DOD-DOA Estimation in MIMO Array Systems

by Bobin Yao, Zhi Dong, Weile Zhang, Wei Wang and Qisheng Wu

Sensors 2018, 18(5), 1557; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18051557 - 14 May 2018

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3751

Abstract

In spatial spectrum estimation, difference co-array can provide extra degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) for promoting parameter identifiability and parameter estimation accuracy. For the sake of acquiring as more DOFs as possible with a given number of physical sensors, we herein design a novel sensor array [...] Read more.

In spatial spectrum estimation, difference co-array can provide extra degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) for promoting parameter identifiability and parameter estimation accuracy. For the sake of acquiring as more DOFs as possible with a given number of physical sensors, we herein design a novel sensor array geometry named cascade array. This structure is generated by systematically connecting a uniform linear array (ULA) and a non-uniform linear array, and can provide more DOFs than some exist array structures but less than the upper-bound indicated by minimum redundant array (MRA). We further apply this cascade array into multiple input multiple output (MIMO) array systems, and propose a novel joint direction of departure (DOD) and direction of arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm, which is based on a reduced-dimensional weighted subspace fitting technique. The algorithm is angle auto-paired and computationally efficient. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations prove the advantages and effectiveness of the proposed array structure and the related algorithm. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

19 pages, 5221 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Vision-Based Counting and Recognition System for Flying Insects in Intelligent Agriculture

by Yuanhong Zhong, Junyuan Gao, Qilun Lei and Yao Zhou

Sensors 2018, 18(5), 1489; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18051489 - 9 May 2018

Cited by 166 | Viewed by 17029

Abstract

Rapid and accurate counting and recognition of flying insects are of great importance, especially for pest control. Traditional manual identification and counting of flying insects is labor intensive and inefficient. In this study, a vision-based counting and classification system for flying insects is [...] Read more.

Rapid and accurate counting and recognition of flying insects are of great importance, especially for pest control. Traditional manual identification and counting of flying insects is labor intensive and inefficient. In this study, a vision-based counting and classification system for flying insects is designed and implemented. The system is constructed as follows: firstly, a yellow sticky trap is installed in the surveillance area to trap flying insects and a camera is set up to collect real-time images. Then the detection and coarse counting method based on You Only Look Once (YOLO) object detection, the classification method and fine counting based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) using global features are designed. Finally, the insect counting and recognition system is implemented on Raspberry PI. Six species of flying insects including bee, fly, mosquito, moth, chafer and fruit fly are selected to assess the effectiveness of the system. Compared with the conventional methods, the test results show promising performance. The average counting accuracy is 92.50% and average classifying accuracy is 90.18% on Raspberry PI. The proposed system is easy-to-use and provides efficient and accurate recognition data, therefore, it can be used for intelligent agriculture applications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 5992 KiB

Open AccessArticle

PCANet-Based Structural Representation for Nonrigid Multimodal Medical Image Registration

by Xingxing Zhu, Mingyue Ding, Tao Huang, Xiaomeng Jin and Xuming Zhang

Sensors 2018, 18(5), 1477; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18051477 - 8 May 2018

Cited by 29 | Viewed by 5524

Abstract

Nonrigid multimodal image registration remains a challenging task in medical image processing and analysis. The structural representation (SR)-based registration methods have attracted much attention recently. However, the existing SR methods cannot provide satisfactory registration accuracy due to the utilization of hand-designed features for [...] Read more.

Nonrigid multimodal image registration remains a challenging task in medical image processing and analysis. The structural representation (SR)-based registration methods have attracted much attention recently. However, the existing SR methods cannot provide satisfactory registration accuracy due to the utilization of hand-designed features for structural representation. To address this problem, the structural representation method based on the improved version of the simple deep learning network named PCANet is proposed for medical image registration. In the proposed method, PCANet is firstly trained on numerous medical images to learn convolution kernels for this network. Then, a pair of input medical images to be registered is processed by the learned PCANet. The features extracted by various layers in the PCANet are fused to produce multilevel features. The structural representation images are constructed for two input images based on nonlinear transformation of these multilevel features. The Euclidean distance between structural representation images is calculated and used as the similarity metrics. The objective function defined by the similarity metrics is optimized by L-BFGS method to obtain parameters of the free-form deformation (FFD) model. Extensive experiments on simulated and real multimodal image datasets show that compared with the state-of-the-art registration methods, such as modality-independent neighborhood descriptor (MIND), normalized mutual information (NMI), Weber local descriptor (WLD), and the sum of squared differences on entropy images (ESSD), the proposed method provides better registration performance in terms of target registration error (TRE) and subjective human vision. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 3729 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Novel Fault Diagnosis Method for Rotating Machinery Based on a Convolutional Neural Network

by Sheng Guo, Tao Yang, Wei Gao and Chen Zhang

Sensors 2018, 18(5), 1429; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18051429 - 4 May 2018

Cited by 207 | Viewed by 10262

Abstract

Fault diagnosis is critical to ensure the safety and reliable operation of rotating machinery. Most methods used in fault diagnosis of rotating machinery extract a few feature values from vibration signals for fault diagnosis, which is a dimensionality reduction from the original signal [...] Read more.

Fault diagnosis is critical to ensure the safety and reliable operation of rotating machinery. Most methods used in fault diagnosis of rotating machinery extract a few feature values from vibration signals for fault diagnosis, which is a dimensionality reduction from the original signal and may omit some important fault messages in the original signal. Thus, a novel diagnosis method is proposed involving the use of a convolutional neural network (CNN) to directly classify the continuous wavelet transform scalogram (CWTS), which is a time-frequency domain transform of the original signal and can contain most of the information of the vibration signals. In this method, CWTS is formed by discomposing vibration signals of rotating machinery in different scales using wavelet transform. Then the CNN is trained to diagnose faults, with CWTS as the input. A series of experiments is conducted on the rotor experiment platform using this method. The results indicate that the proposed method can diagnose the faults accurately. To verify the universality of this method, the trained CNN was also used to perform fault diagnosis for another piece of rotor equipment, and a good result was achieved. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

25 pages, 2054 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Unsupervised Learning for Monaural Source Separation Using Maximization–Minimization Algorithm with Time–Frequency Deconvolution ^†

by Wai Lok Woo, Bin Gao, Ahmed Bouridane, Bingo Wing-Kuen Ling and Cheng Siong Chin

Sensors 2018, 18(5), 1371; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18051371 - 27 Apr 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 4647

Abstract

This paper presents an unsupervised learning algorithm for sparse nonnegative matrix factor time–frequency deconvolution with optimized fractional

β

-divergence. The

β

-divergence is a group of cost functions parametrized by a single parameter

β

. The Itakura–Saito divergence, Kullback–Leibler divergence and Least Square [...] Read more.

This paper presents an unsupervised learning algorithm for sparse nonnegative matrix factor time–frequency deconvolution with optimized fractional

β

-divergence. The

β

-divergence is a group of cost functions parametrized by a single parameter

β

. The Itakura–Saito divergence, Kullback–Leibler divergence and Least Square distance are special cases that correspond to

β = 0, 1, 2

, respectively. This paper presents a generalized algorithm that uses a flexible range of

β

that includes fractional values. It describes a maximization–minimization (MM) algorithm leading to the development of a fast convergence multiplicative update algorithm with guaranteed convergence. The proposed model operates in the time–frequency domain and decomposes an information-bearing matrix into two-dimensional deconvolution of factor matrices that represent the spectral dictionary and temporal codes. The deconvolution process has been optimized to yield sparse temporal codes through maximizing the likelihood of the observations. The paper also presents a method to estimate the fractional

β

value. The method is demonstrated on separating audio mixtures recorded from a single channel. The paper shows that the extraction of the spectral dictionary and temporal codes is significantly more efficient by using the proposed algorithm and subsequently leads to better source separation performance. Experimental tests and comparisons with other factorization methods have been conducted to verify its efficacy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

27 pages, 1276 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Cross-Participant EEG-Based Assessment of Cognitive Workload Using Multi-Path Convolutional Recurrent Neural Networks

by Ryan Hefron, Brett Borghetti, Christine Schubert Kabban, James Christensen and Justin Estepp

Sensors 2018, 18(5), 1339; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18051339 - 26 Apr 2018

Cited by 38 | Viewed by 5401

Abstract

Applying deep learning methods to electroencephalograph (EEG) data for cognitive state assessment has yielded improvements over previous modeling methods. However, research focused on cross-participant cognitive workload modeling using these techniques is underrepresented. We study the problem of cross-participant state estimation in a non-stimulus-locked [...] Read more.

Applying deep learning methods to electroencephalograph (EEG) data for cognitive state assessment has yielded improvements over previous modeling methods. However, research focused on cross-participant cognitive workload modeling using these techniques is underrepresented. We study the problem of cross-participant state estimation in a non-stimulus-locked task environment, where a trained model is used to make workload estimates on a new participant who is not represented in the training set. Using experimental data from the Multi-Attribute Task Battery (MATB) environment, a variety of deep neural network models are evaluated in the trade-space of computational efficiency, model accuracy, variance and temporal specificity yielding three important contributions: (1) The performance of ensembles of individually-trained models is statistically indistinguishable from group-trained methods at most sequence lengths. These ensembles can be trained for a fraction of the computational cost compared to group-trained methods and enable simpler model updates. (2) While increasing temporal sequence length improves mean accuracy, it is not sufficient to overcome distributional dissimilarities between individuals’ EEG data, as it results in statistically significant increases in cross-participant variance. (3) Compared to all other networks evaluated, a novel convolutional-recurrent model using multi-path subnetworks and bi-directional, residual recurrent layers resulted in statistically significant increases in predictive accuracy and decreases in cross-participant variance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

19 pages, 11014 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Frequency Signal Detection Based on Frequency Exchange and Re-Scaling Stochastic Resonance and Its Application to Weak Fault Diagnosis

by Jinjun Liu, Yonggang Leng, Zhihui Lai and Shengbo Fan

Sensors 2018, 18(5), 1325; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18051325 - 25 Apr 2018

Cited by 30 | Viewed by 4285

Abstract

Mechanical fault diagnosis usually requires not only identification of the fault characteristic frequency, but also detection of its second and/or higher harmonics. However, it is difficult to detect a multi-frequency fault signal through the existing Stochastic Resonance (SR) methods, because the characteristic frequency [...] Read more.

Mechanical fault diagnosis usually requires not only identification of the fault characteristic frequency, but also detection of its second and/or higher harmonics. However, it is difficult to detect a multi-frequency fault signal through the existing Stochastic Resonance (SR) methods, because the characteristic frequency of the fault signal as well as its second and higher harmonics frequencies tend to be large parameters. To solve the problem, this paper proposes a multi-frequency signal detection method based on Frequency Exchange and Re-scaling Stochastic Resonance (FERSR). In the method, frequency exchange is implemented using filtering technique and Single SideBand (SSB) modulation. This new method can overcome the limitation of "sampling ratio" which is the ratio of the sampling frequency to the frequency of target signal. It also ensures that the multi-frequency target signals can be processed to meet the small-parameter conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the method shows good performance for detecting a multi-frequency signal with low sampling ratio. Two practical cases are employed to further validate the effectiveness and applicability of this method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 1322 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Two-Stage Reconstruction Processor for Human Detection in Compressive Sensing CMOS Radar

by Kuei-Chi Tsao, Ling Lee, Ta-Shun Chu and Yuan-Hao Huang

Sensors 2018, 18(4), 1106; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18041106 - 5 Apr 2018

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4290

Abstract

Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) radar has recently gained much research attraction because small and low-power CMOS devices are very suitable for deploying sensing nodes in a low-power wireless sensing system. This study focuses on the signal processing of a wireless CMOS impulse radar system [...] Read more.

Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) radar has recently gained much research attraction because small and low-power CMOS devices are very suitable for deploying sensing nodes in a low-power wireless sensing system. This study focuses on the signal processing of a wireless CMOS impulse radar system that can detect humans and objects in the home-care internet-of-things sensing system. The challenges of low-power CMOS radar systems are the weakness of human signals and the high computational complexity of the target detection algorithm. The compressive sensing-based detection algorithm can relax the computational costs by avoiding the utilization of matched filters and reducing the analog-to-digital converter bandwidth requirement. The orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) is one of the popular signal reconstruction algorithms for compressive sensing radar; however, the complexity is still very high because the high resolution of human respiration leads to high-dimension signal reconstruction. Thus, this paper proposes a two-stage reconstruction algorithm for compressive sensing radar. The proposed algorithm not only has lower complexity than the OMP algorithm by 75% but also achieves better positioning performance than the OMP algorithm especially in noisy environments. This study also designed and implemented the algorithm by using Vertex-7 FPGA chip (Xilinx, San Jose, CA, USA). The proposed reconstruction processor can support the

256 \times 13

real-time radar image display with a throughput of 28.2 frames per second. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 2058 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Weighted Deep Representation Learning Model for Imbalanced Fault Diagnosis in Cyber-Physical Systems

by Zhenyu Wu, Yang Guo, Wenfang Lin, Shuyang Yu and Yang Ji

Sensors 2018, 18(4), 1096; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18041096 - 5 Apr 2018

Cited by 69 | Viewed by 6160

Abstract

Predictive maintenance plays an important role in modern Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and data-driven methods have been a worthwhile direction for Prognostics Health Management (PHM). However, two main challenges have significant influences on the traditional fault diagnostic models: one is that extracting hand-crafted features [...] Read more.

Predictive maintenance plays an important role in modern Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and data-driven methods have been a worthwhile direction for Prognostics Health Management (PHM). However, two main challenges have significant influences on the traditional fault diagnostic models: one is that extracting hand-crafted features from multi-dimensional sensors with internal dependencies depends too much on expertise knowledge; the other is that imbalance pervasively exists among faulty and normal samples. As deep learning models have proved to be good methods for automatic feature extraction, the objective of this paper is to study an optimized deep learning model for imbalanced fault diagnosis for CPSs. Thus, this paper proposes a weighted Long Recurrent Convolutional LSTM model with sampling policy (wLRCL-D) to deal with these challenges. The model consists of 2-layer CNNs, 2-layer inner LSTMs and 2-Layer outer LSTMs, with under-sampling policy and weighted cost-sensitive loss function. Experiments are conducted on PHM 2015 challenge datasets, and the results show that wLRCL-D outperforms other baseline methods. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 49231 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sparse Reconstruction Based Robust Near-Field Source Localization Algorithm

by Sen Li, Bing Li, Bin Lin, Xiaofang Tang and Rongxi He

Sensors 2018, 18(4), 1066; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18041066 - 2 Apr 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3456

Abstract

Non-Gaussian impulsive noise widely exists in the real world, this paper takes the α-stable distribution as the mathematical model of non-Gaussian impulsive noise and works on the joint direction-of-arrival (DOA) and range estimation problem of near-field signals in impulsive noise environment. Since the [...] Read more.

Non-Gaussian impulsive noise widely exists in the real world, this paper takes the α-stable distribution as the mathematical model of non-Gaussian impulsive noise and works on the joint direction-of-arrival (DOA) and range estimation problem of near-field signals in impulsive noise environment. Since the conventional algorithms based on the classical second order correlation statistics degenerate severely in the impulsive noise environment, this paper adopts two robust correlations, the fractional lower order correlation (FLOC) and the nonlinear transform correlation (NTC), and presents two related near-field localization algorithms. In our proposed algorithms, by exploring the symmetrical characteristic of the array, we construct the robust far-field approximate correlation vector in relation with the DOA only, which allows for bearing estimation based on the sparse reconstruction. With the estimated bearing, the range can consequently be obtained by the sparse reconstruction of the output of a virtual array. The proposed algorithms have the merits of good noise suppression ability, and their effectiveness is demonstrated by the computer simulation results. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 16673 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Robust Real Time Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Method for Sequential Movement Events of Vehicles

by Huawei Liu, Baoqing Li, Xiaobing Yuan, Qianwei Zhou and Jingchang Huang

Sensors 2018, 18(4), 992; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18040992 - 27 Mar 2018

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4574

Abstract

Parameters estimation of sequential movement events of vehicles is facing the challenges of noise interferences and the demands of portable implementation. In this paper, we propose a robust direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation method for the sequential movement events of vehicles based on a small [...] Read more.

Parameters estimation of sequential movement events of vehicles is facing the challenges of noise interferences and the demands of portable implementation. In this paper, we propose a robust direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation method for the sequential movement events of vehicles based on a small Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) microphone array system. Inspired by the incoherent signal-subspace method (ISM), the method that is proposed in this work employs multiple sub-bands, which are selected from the wideband signals with high magnitude-squared coherence to track moving vehicles in the presence of wind noise. The field test results demonstrate that the proposed method has a better performance in emulating the DOA of a moving vehicle even in the case of severe wind interference than the narrowband multiple signal classification (MUSIC) method, the sub-band DOA estimation method, and the classical two-sided correlation transformation (TCT) method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 4591 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Resonance-Based Time-Frequency Manifold for Feature Extraction of Ship-Radiated Noise

by Jiaquan Yan, Haixin Sun, Hailan Chen, Naveed Ur Rehman Junejo and En Cheng

Sensors 2018, 18(4), 936; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18040936 - 22 Mar 2018

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 4842

Abstract

In this paper, a novel time-frequency signature using resonance-based sparse signal decomposition (RSSD), phase space reconstruction (PSR), time-frequency distribution (TFD) and manifold learning is proposed for feature extraction of ship-radiated noise, which is called resonance-based time-frequency manifold (RTFM). This is suitable for analyzing [...] Read more.

In this paper, a novel time-frequency signature using resonance-based sparse signal decomposition (RSSD), phase space reconstruction (PSR), time-frequency distribution (TFD) and manifold learning is proposed for feature extraction of ship-radiated noise, which is called resonance-based time-frequency manifold (RTFM). This is suitable for analyzing signals with oscillatory, non-stationary and non-linear characteristics in a situation of serious noise pollution. Unlike the traditional methods which are sensitive to noise and just consider one side of oscillatory, non-stationary and non-linear characteristics, the proposed RTFM can provide the intact feature signature of all these characteristics in the form of a time-frequency signature by the following steps: first, RSSD is employed on the raw signal to extract the high-oscillatory component and abandon the low-oscillatory component. Second, PSR is performed on the high-oscillatory component to map the one-dimensional signal to the high-dimensional phase space. Third, TFD is employed to reveal non-stationary information in the phase space. Finally, manifold learning is applied to the TFDs to fetch the intrinsic non-linear manifold. A proportional addition of the top two RTFMs is adopted to produce the improved RTFM signature. All of the case studies are validated on real audio recordings of ship-radiated noise. Case studies of ship-radiated noise on different datasets and various degrees of noise pollution manifest the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

19 pages, 19395 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Robust Spacecraft Component Detection in Point Clouds

by Quanmao Wei, Zhiguo Jiang and Haopeng Zhang

Sensors 2018, 18(4), 933; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18040933 - 21 Mar 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 4420

Abstract

Automatic component detection of spacecraft can assist in on-orbit operation and space situational awareness. Spacecraft are generally composed of solar panels and cuboidal or cylindrical modules. These components can be simply represented by geometric primitives like plane, cuboid and cylinder. Based on this [...] Read more.

Automatic component detection of spacecraft can assist in on-orbit operation and space situational awareness. Spacecraft are generally composed of solar panels and cuboidal or cylindrical modules. These components can be simply represented by geometric primitives like plane, cuboid and cylinder. Based on this prior, we propose a robust automatic detection scheme to automatically detect such basic components of spacecraft in three-dimensional (3D) point clouds. In the proposed scheme, cylinders are first detected in the iteration of the energy-based geometric model fitting and cylinder parameter estimation. Then, planes are detected by Hough transform and further described as bounded patches with their minimum bounding rectangles. Finally, the cuboids are detected with pair-wise geometry relations from the detected patches. After successive detection of cylinders, planar patches and cuboids, a mid-level geometry representation of the spacecraft can be delivered. We tested the proposed component detection scheme on spacecraft 3D point clouds synthesized by computer-aided design (CAD) models and those recovered by image-based reconstruction, respectively. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed scheme can detect the basic geometric components effectively and has fine robustness against noise and point distribution density. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 2597 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fusion of an Ensemble of Augmented Image Detectors for Robust Object Detection

by Pan Wei, John E. Ball and Derek T. Anderson

Sensors 2018, 18(3), 894; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18030894 - 17 Mar 2018

Cited by 25 | Viewed by 4461

Abstract

A significant challenge in object detection is accurate identification of an object’s position in image space, whereas one algorithm with one set of parameters is usually not enough, and the fusion of multiple algorithms and/or parameters can lead to more robust results. Herein, [...] Read more.

A significant challenge in object detection is accurate identification of an object’s position in image space, whereas one algorithm with one set of parameters is usually not enough, and the fusion of multiple algorithms and/or parameters can lead to more robust results. Herein, a new computational intelligence fusion approach based on the dynamic analysis of agreement among object detection outputs is proposed. Furthermore, we propose an online versus just in training image augmentation strategy. Experiments comparing the results both with and without fusion are presented. We demonstrate that the augmented and fused combination results are the best, with respect to higher accuracy rates and reduction of outlier influences. The approach is demonstrated in the context of cone, pedestrian and box detection for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) applications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 1943 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Target Angle Tracking Algorithm for Bistatic Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) Radar Based on the Elements of the Covariance Matrix

by Zhengyan Zhang, Jianyun Zhang, Qingsong Zhou and Xiaobo Li

Sensors 2018, 18(3), 805; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18030805 - 7 Mar 2018

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4260

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the problem of tracking the direction of arrivals (DOA) and the direction of departure (DOD) of multiple targets for bistatic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar. A high-precision tracking algorithm for target angle is proposed. First, the linear relationship between [...] Read more.

In this paper, we consider the problem of tracking the direction of arrivals (DOA) and the direction of departure (DOD) of multiple targets for bistatic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar. A high-precision tracking algorithm for target angle is proposed. First, the linear relationship between the covariance matrix difference and the angle difference of the adjacent moment was obtained through three approximate relations. Then, the proposed algorithm obtained the relationship between the elements in the covariance matrix difference. On this basis, the performance of the algorithm was improved by averaging the covariance matrix element. Finally, the least square method was used to estimate the DOD and DOA. The algorithm realized the automatic correlation of the angle and provided better performance when compared with the adaptive asymmetric joint diagonalization (AAJD) algorithm. The simulation results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The algorithm provides the technical support for the practical application of MIMO radar. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 1920 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Lightweight Active Object Retrieval with Weak Classifiers

by László Czúni and Metwally Rashad

Sensors 2018, 18(3), 801; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18030801 - 7 Mar 2018

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3767

Abstract

In the last few years, there has been a steadily growing interest in autonomous vehicles and robotic systems. While many of these agents are expected to have limited resources, these systems should be able to dynamically interact with other objects in their environment. [...] Read more.

In the last few years, there has been a steadily growing interest in autonomous vehicles and robotic systems. While many of these agents are expected to have limited resources, these systems should be able to dynamically interact with other objects in their environment. We present an approach where lightweight sensory and processing techniques, requiring very limited memory and processing power, can be successfully applied to the task of object retrieval using sensors of different modalities. We use the Hough framework to fuse optical and orientation information of the different views of the objects. In the presented spatio-temporal perception technique, we apply active vision, where, based on the analysis of initial measurements, the direction of the next view is determined to increase the hit-rate of retrieval. The performance of the proposed methods is shown on three datasets loaded with heavy noise. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

10 pages, 1213 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Quality Control Procedure Based on Partitioning of NMR Time Series

by Michał Staniszewski, Agnieszka Skorupa, Łukasz Boguszewicz, Maria Sokół and Andrzej Polański

Sensors 2018, 18(3), 792; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18030792 - 6 Mar 2018

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4542

Abstract

The quality of the magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) depends on the stability of magnetic resonance (MR) system performance and optimal hardware functioning, which ensure adequate levels of signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) as well as good spectral resolution and minimal artifacts in the spectral data. [...] Read more.

The quality of the magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) depends on the stability of magnetic resonance (MR) system performance and optimal hardware functioning, which ensure adequate levels of signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) as well as good spectral resolution and minimal artifacts in the spectral data. MRS quality control (QC) protocols and methodologies are based on phantom measurements that are repeated regularly. In this work, a signal partitioning algorithm based on a dynamic programming (DP) method for QC assessment of the spectral data is described. The proposed algorithm allows detection of the change points—the abrupt variations in the time series data. The proposed QC method was tested using the simulated and real phantom data. Simulated data were randomly generated time series distorted by white noise. The real data were taken from the phantom quality control studies of the MRS scanner collected for four and a half years and analyzed by LCModel software. Along with the proposed algorithm, performance of various literature methods was evaluated for the predefined number of change points based on the error values calculated by subtracting the mean values calculated for the periods between the change-points from the original data points. The time series were checked using external software, a set of external methods and the proposed tool, and the obtained results were comparable. The application of dynamic programming in the analysis of the phantom MRS data is a novel approach to QC. The obtained results confirm that the presented change-point-detection tool can be used either for independent analysis of MRS time series (or any other) or as a part of quality control. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 8022 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Low Computational Signal Acquisition for GNSS Receivers Using a Resampling Strategy and Variable Circular Correlation Time

by Yeqing Zhang, Meiling Wang and Yafeng Li

Sensors 2018, 18(2), 678; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18020678 - 24 Feb 2018

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 6092

Abstract

For the objective of essentially decreasing computational complexity and time consumption of signal acquisition, this paper explores a resampling strategy and variable circular correlation time strategy specific to broadband multi-frequency GNSS receivers. In broadband GNSS receivers, the resampling strategy is established to work [...] Read more.

For the objective of essentially decreasing computational complexity and time consumption of signal acquisition, this paper explores a resampling strategy and variable circular correlation time strategy specific to broadband multi-frequency GNSS receivers. In broadband GNSS receivers, the resampling strategy is established to work on conventional acquisition algorithms by resampling the main lobe of received broadband signals with a much lower frequency. Variable circular correlation time is designed to adapt to different signal strength conditions and thereby increase the operation flexibility of GNSS signal acquisition. The acquisition threshold is defined as the ratio of the highest and second highest correlation results in the search space of carrier frequency and code phase. Moreover, computational complexity of signal acquisition is formulated by amounts of multiplication and summation operations in the acquisition process. Comparative experiments and performance analysis are conducted on four sets of real GPS L2C signals with different sampling frequencies. The results indicate that the resampling strategy can effectively decrease computation and time cost by nearly 90–94% with just slight loss of acquisition sensitivity. With circular correlation time varying from 10 ms to 20 ms, the time cost of signal acquisition has increased by about 2.7–5.6% per millisecond, with most satellites acquired successfully. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

27 pages, 11384 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Robust Object Tracking Based on Motion Consistency

by Lijun He, Xiaoya Qiao, Shuai Wen and Fan Li

Sensors 2018, 18(2), 572; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18020572 - 13 Feb 2018

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3993

Abstract

Object tracking is an important research direction in computer vision and is widely used in video surveillance, security monitoring, video analysis and other fields. Conventional tracking algorithms perform poorly in specific scenes, such as a target with fast motion and occlusion. The candidate [...] Read more.

Object tracking is an important research direction in computer vision and is widely used in video surveillance, security monitoring, video analysis and other fields. Conventional tracking algorithms perform poorly in specific scenes, such as a target with fast motion and occlusion. The candidate samples may lose the true target due to its fast motion. Moreover, the appearance of the target may change with movement. In this paper, we propose an object tracking algorithm based on motion consistency. In the state transition model, candidate samples are obtained by the target state, which is predicted according to the temporal correlation. In the appearance model, we define the position factor to represent the different importance of candidate samples in different positions using the double Gaussian probability model. The candidate sample with highest likelihood is selected as the tracking result by combining the holistic and local responses with the position factor. Moreover, an adaptive template updating scheme is proposed to adapt to the target’s appearance changes, especially those caused by fast motion. The experimental results on a 2013 benchmark dataset demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs better in scenes with fast motion and partial or full occlusion compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 846 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Polynomial Phase Estimation Based on Adaptive Short-Time Fourier Transform

by Fulong Jing, Chunjie Zhang, Weijian Si, Yu Wang and Shuhong Jiao

Sensors 2018, 18(2), 568; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18020568 - 13 Feb 2018

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3806

Abstract

Polynomial phase signals (PPSs) have numerous applications in many fields including radar, sonar, geophysics, and radio communication systems. Therefore, estimation of PPS coefficients is very important. In this paper, a novel approach for PPS parameters estimation based on adaptive short-time Fourier transform (ASTFT), [...] Read more.

Polynomial phase signals (PPSs) have numerous applications in many fields including radar, sonar, geophysics, and radio communication systems. Therefore, estimation of PPS coefficients is very important. In this paper, a novel approach for PPS parameters estimation based on adaptive short-time Fourier transform (ASTFT), called the PPS-ASTFT estimator, is proposed. Using the PPS-ASTFT estimator, both one-dimensional and multi-dimensional searches and error propagation problems, which widely exist in PPSs field, are avoided. In the proposed algorithm, the instantaneous frequency (IF) is estimated by S-transform (ST), which can preserve information on signal phase and provide a variable resolution similar to the wavelet transform (WT). The width of the ASTFT analysis window is equal to the local stationary length, which is measured by the instantaneous frequency gradient (IFG). The IFG is calculated by the principal component analysis (PCA), which is robust to the noise. Moreover, to improve estimation accuracy, a refinement strategy is presented to estimate signal parameters. Since the PPS-ASTFT avoids parameter search, the proposed algorithm can be computed in a reasonable amount of time. The estimation performance, computational cost, and implementation of the PPS-ASTFT are also analyzed. The conducted numerical simulations support our theoretical results and demonstrate an excellent statistical performance of the proposed algorithm. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

25 pages, 5786 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Complementary Model for Long-Term Tracking

by Deng Zhang, Junchang Zhang and Chenyang Xia

Sensors 2018, 18(2), 527; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18020527 - 9 Feb 2018

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3691

Abstract

In recent years, video target tracking algorithms have been widely used. However, many tracking algorithms do not achieve satisfactory performance, especially when dealing with problems such as object occlusions, background clutters, motion blur, low illumination color images, and sudden illumination changes in real [...] Read more.

In recent years, video target tracking algorithms have been widely used. However, many tracking algorithms do not achieve satisfactory performance, especially when dealing with problems such as object occlusions, background clutters, motion blur, low illumination color images, and sudden illumination changes in real scenes. In this paper, we incorporate an object model based on contour information into a Staple tracker that combines the correlation filter model and color model to greatly improve the tracking robustness. Since each model is responsible for tracking specific features, the three complementary models combine for more robust tracking. In addition, we propose an efficient object detection model with contour and color histogram features, which has good detection performance and better detection efficiency compared to the traditional target detection algorithm. Finally, we optimize the traditional scale calculation, which greatly improves the tracking execution speed. We evaluate our tracker on the Object Tracking Benchmarks 2013 (OTB-13) and Object Tracking Benchmarks 2015 (OTB-15) benchmark datasets. With the OTB-13 benchmark datasets, our algorithm is improved by 4.8%, 9.6%, and 10.9% on the success plots of OPE, TRE and SRE, respectively, in contrast to another classic LCT (Long-term Correlation Tracking) algorithm. On the OTB-15 benchmark datasets, when compared with the LCT algorithm, our algorithm achieves 10.4%, 12.5%, and 16.1% improvement on the success plots of OPE, TRE, and SRE, respectively. At the same time, it needs to be emphasized that, due to the high computational efficiency of the color model and the object detection model using efficient data structures, and the speed advantage of the correlation filters, our tracking algorithm could still achieve good tracking speed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 4833 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Parametric Evaluation of Errors Using Isolated Dots for Movement Measurement by Image Cross-Correlation

by Belen Ferrer and David Mas

Sensors 2018, 18(2), 525; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18020525 - 9 Feb 2018

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3303

Abstract

Digital Image Correlation (DIC) is a common tool for assessing the movement of objects in a scene. Among others, one of the most popular techniques consists of tracking a dotted texture imitating speckle patterns. In this work, we analyzed the individual dots that [...] Read more.

Digital Image Correlation (DIC) is a common tool for assessing the movement of objects in a scene. Among others, one of the most popular techniques consists of tracking a dotted texture imitating speckle patterns. In this work, we analyzed the individual dots that form this pattern in order to propose an optimum size, shape, and dynamic range that allows minimizing the tracking error. Tracking was accomplished by using normalized cross-correlation with peak interpolation in order to obtain subpixel accuracy. For the models here used, we show that dot radii of 30–40 px with 150 gray levels are enough to obtain an accurate subpixel tracking resolution. Also, we show that 0.002 px is the performance limit of this technique, being this limit in accordance with the experimentally achievable subpixel limit. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Graphical abstract

19 pages, 15882 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Deep Learning-Based Banknote Fitness Classification Using the Reflection Images by a Visible-Light One-Dimensional Line Image Sensor

by Tuyen Danh Pham, Dat Tien Nguyen, Wan Kim, Sung Ho Park and Kang Ryoung Park

Sensors 2018, 18(2), 472; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18020472 - 6 Feb 2018

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 5067

Abstract

In automatic paper currency sorting, fitness classification is a technique that assesses the quality of banknotes to determine whether a banknote is suitable for recirculation or should be replaced. Studies on using visible-light reflection images of banknotes for evaluating their usability have been [...] Read more.

In automatic paper currency sorting, fitness classification is a technique that assesses the quality of banknotes to determine whether a banknote is suitable for recirculation or should be replaced. Studies on using visible-light reflection images of banknotes for evaluating their usability have been reported. However, most of them were conducted under the assumption that the denomination and input direction of the banknote are predetermined. In other words, a pre-classification of the type of input banknote is required. To address this problem, we proposed a deep learning-based fitness-classification method that recognizes the fitness level of a banknote regardless of the denomination and input direction of the banknote to the system, using the reflection images of banknotes by visible-light one-dimensional line image sensor and a convolutional neural network (CNN). Experimental results on the banknote image databases of the Korean won (KRW) and the Indian rupee (INR) with three fitness levels, and the Unites States dollar (USD) with two fitness levels, showed that our method gives better classification accuracy than other methods. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 10116 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Cutting Pattern Identification for Coal Mining Shearer through a Swarm Intelligence–Based Variable Translation Wavelet Neural Network

by Jing Xu, Zhongbin Wang, Chao Tan, Lei Si and Xinhua Liu

Sensors 2018, 18(2), 382; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18020382 - 29 Jan 2018

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 4330

Abstract

As a sound signal has the advantages of non-contacted measurement, compact structure, and low power consumption, it has resulted in much attention in many fields. In this paper, the sound signal of the coal mining shearer is analyzed to realize the accurate online [...] Read more.

As a sound signal has the advantages of non-contacted measurement, compact structure, and low power consumption, it has resulted in much attention in many fields. In this paper, the sound signal of the coal mining shearer is analyzed to realize the accurate online cutting pattern identification and guarantee the safety quality of the working face. The original acoustic signal is first collected through an industrial microphone and decomposed by adaptive ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD). A 13-dimensional set composed by the normalized energy of each level is extracted as the feature vector in the next step. Then, a swarm intelligence optimization algorithm inspired by bat foraging behavior is applied to determine key parameters of the traditional variable translation wavelet neural network (VTWNN). Moreover, a disturbance coefficient is introduced into the basic bat algorithm (BA) to overcome the disadvantage of easily falling into local extremum and limited exploration ability. The VTWNN optimized by the modified BA (VTWNN-MBA) is used as the cutting pattern recognizer. Finally, a simulation example, with an accuracy of 95.25%, and a series of comparisons are conducted to prove the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 4636 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An EEG-Based Person Authentication System with Open-Set Capability Combining Eye Blinking Signals

by Qunjian Wu, Ying Zeng, Chi Zhang, Li Tong and Bin Yan

Sensors 2018, 18(2), 335; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18020335 - 24 Jan 2018

Cited by 60 | Viewed by 6632

Abstract

The electroencephalogram (EEG) signal represents a subject’s specific brain activity patterns and is considered as an ideal biometric given its superior forgery prevention. However, the accuracy and stability of the current EEG-based person authentication systems are still unsatisfactory in practical application. In this [...] Read more.

The electroencephalogram (EEG) signal represents a subject’s specific brain activity patterns and is considered as an ideal biometric given its superior forgery prevention. However, the accuracy and stability of the current EEG-based person authentication systems are still unsatisfactory in practical application. In this paper, a multi-task EEG-based person authentication system combining eye blinking is proposed, which can achieve high precision and robustness. Firstly, we design a novel EEG-based biometric evoked paradigm using self- or non-self-face rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). The designed paradigm could obtain a distinct and stable biometric trait from EEG with a lower time cost. Secondly, the event-related potential (ERP) features and morphological features are extracted from EEG signals and eye blinking signals, respectively. Thirdly, convolutional neural network and back propagation neural network are severally designed to gain the score estimation of EEG features and eye blinking features. Finally, a score fusion technology based on least square method is proposed to get the final estimation score. The performance of multi-task authentication system is improved significantly compared to the system using EEG only, with an increasing average accuracy from 92.4% to 97.6%. Moreover, open-set authentication tests for additional imposters and permanence tests for users are conducted to simulate the practical scenarios, which have never been employed in previous EEG-based person authentication systems. A mean false accepted rate (FAR) of 3.90% and a mean false rejected rate (FRR) of 3.87% are accomplished in open-set authentication tests and permanence tests, respectively, which illustrate the open-set authentication and permanence capability of our systems. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

11 pages, 892 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Underdetermined Wideband DOA Estimation for Off-Grid Sources with Coprime Array Using Sparse Bayesian Learning

by Yanhua Qin, Yumin Liu, Jianyi Liu and Zhongyuan Yu

Sensors 2018, 18(1), 253; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18010253 - 16 Jan 2018

Cited by 26 | Viewed by 4390

Abstract

Sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) is applied to the coprime array for underdetermined wideband direction of arrival (DOA) estimation. Using the augmented covariance matrix, the coprime array can achieve a higher number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) to resolve more sources than the number [...] Read more.

Sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) is applied to the coprime array for underdetermined wideband direction of arrival (DOA) estimation. Using the augmented covariance matrix, the coprime array can achieve a higher number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) to resolve more sources than the number of physical sensors. The sparse-based DOA estimation can deteriorate the detection and estimation performance because the sources may be off the search grid no matter how fine the grid is. This dictionary mismatch problem can be well resolved by the SBL using fixed point updates. The SBL can automatically choose sparsity and approximately resolve the non-convex optimizaton problem. Numerical simulations are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the underdetermined wideband DOA estimation via SBL based on coprime array. It is clear that SBL can obtain good performance in detection and estimation compared to least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), simultaneous orthogonal matching pursuit least squares (SOMP-LS) , simultaneous orthogonal matching pursuit total least squares (SOMP-TLS) and off-grid sparse Bayesian inference (OGSBI). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 5269 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Superpixel-Based Feature for Aerial Image Scene Recognition

by Hongguang Li, Yang Shi, Baochang Zhang and Yufeng Wang

Sensors 2018, 18(1), 156; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18010156 - 8 Jan 2018

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 5500

Abstract

Image scene recognition is a core technology for many aerial remote sensing applications. Different landforms are inputted as different scenes in aerial imaging, and all landform information is regarded as valuable for aerial image scene recognition. However, the conventional features of the Bag-of-Words [...] Read more.

Image scene recognition is a core technology for many aerial remote sensing applications. Different landforms are inputted as different scenes in aerial imaging, and all landform information is regarded as valuable for aerial image scene recognition. However, the conventional features of the Bag-of-Words model are designed using local points or other related information and thus are unable to fully describe landform areas. This limitation cannot be ignored when the aim is to ensure accurate aerial scene recognition. A novel superpixel-based feature is proposed in this study to characterize aerial image scenes. Then, based on the proposed feature, a scene recognition method of the Bag-of-Words model for aerial imaging is designed. The proposed superpixel-based feature that utilizes landform information establishes top-task superpixel extraction of landforms to bottom-task expression of feature vectors. This characterization technique comprises the following steps: simple linear iterative clustering based superpixel segmentation, adaptive filter bank construction, Lie group-based feature quantification, and visual saliency model-based feature weighting. Experiments of image scene recognition are carried out using real image data captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The recognition accuracy of the proposed superpixel-based feature is 95.1%, which is higher than those of scene recognition algorithms based on other local features. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Graphical abstract

15 pages, 2551 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Organ Segmentation in Poultry Viscera Using RGB-D

by Mark Philip Philipsen, Jacob Velling Dueholm, Anders Jørgensen, Sergio Escalera and Thomas Baltzer Moeslund

Sensors 2018, 18(1), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18010117 - 3 Jan 2018

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 5734

Abstract

We present a pattern recognition framework for semantic segmentation of visual structures, that is, multi-class labelling at pixel level, and apply it to the task of segmenting organs in the eviscerated viscera from slaughtered poultry in RGB-D images. This is a step towards [...] Read more.

We present a pattern recognition framework for semantic segmentation of visual structures, that is, multi-class labelling at pixel level, and apply it to the task of segmenting organs in the eviscerated viscera from slaughtered poultry in RGB-D images. This is a step towards replacing the current strenuous manual inspection at poultry processing plants. Features are extracted from feature maps such as activation maps from a convolutional neural network (CNN). A random forest classifier assigns class probabilities, which are further refined by utilizing context in a conditional random field. The presented method is compatible with both 2D and 3D features, which allows us to explore the value of adding 3D and CNN-derived features. The dataset consists of 604 RGB-D images showing 151 unique sets of eviscerated viscera from four different perspectives. A mean Jaccard index of

78.11 %

is achieved across the four classes of organs by using features derived from 2D, 3D and a CNN, compared to

74.28 %

using only basic 2D image features. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

3081 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Research on Ship-Radiated Noise Denoising Using Secondary Variational Mode Decomposition and Correlation Coefficient

by Yuxing Li, Yaan Li, Xiao Chen and Jing Yu

Sensors 2018, 18(1), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18010048 - 26 Dec 2017

Cited by 61 | Viewed by 5674

Abstract

As the sound signal of ships obtained by sensors contains other many significant characteristics of ships and called ship-radiated noise (SN), research into a denoising algorithm and its application has obtained great significance. Using the advantage of variational mode decomposition (VMD) combined with [...] Read more.

As the sound signal of ships obtained by sensors contains other many significant characteristics of ships and called ship-radiated noise (SN), research into a denoising algorithm and its application has obtained great significance. Using the advantage of variational mode decomposition (VMD) combined with the correlation coefficient for denoising, a hybrid secondary denoising algorithm is proposed using secondary VMD combined with a correlation coefficient (CC). First, different kinds of simulation signals are decomposed into several bandwidth-limited intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) using VMD, where the decomposition number by VMD is equal to the number by empirical mode decomposition (EMD); then, the CCs between the IMFs and the simulation signal are calculated respectively. The noise IMFs are identified by the CC threshold and the rest of the IMFs are reconstructed in order to realize the first denoising process. Finally, secondary denoising of the simulation signal can be accomplished by repeating the above steps of decomposition, screening and reconstruction. The final denoising result is determined according to the CC threshold. The denoising effect is compared under the different signal-to-noise ratio and the time of decomposition by VMD. Experimental results show the validity of the proposed denoising algorithm using secondary VMD (2VMD) combined with CC compared to EMD denoising, ensemble EMD (EEMD) denoising, VMD denoising and cubic VMD (3VMD) denoising, as well as two denoising algorithms presented recently. The proposed denoising algorithm is applied to feature extraction and classification for SN signals, which can effectively improve the recognition rate of different kinds of ships. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

451 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Support Vector Learning-Based Particle Filter Scheme for Target Localization in Communication-Constrained Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

by Xinbin Li, Chenglin Zhang, Lei Yan, Song Han and Xinping Guan

Sensors 2018, 18(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18010008 - 21 Dec 2017

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 5488

Abstract

Target localization, which aims to estimate the location of an unknown target, is one of the key issues in applications of underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs). However, the constrained property of an underwater environment, such as restricted communication capacity of sensor nodes and [...] Read more.

Target localization, which aims to estimate the location of an unknown target, is one of the key issues in applications of underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs). However, the constrained property of an underwater environment, such as restricted communication capacity of sensor nodes and sensing noises, makes target localization a challenging problem. This paper relies on fractional sensor nodes to formulate a support vector learning-based particle filter algorithm for the localization problem in communication-constrained underwater acoustic sensor networks. A node-selection strategy is exploited to pick fractional sensor nodes with short-distance pattern to participate in the sensing process at each time frame. Subsequently, we propose a least-square support vector regression (LSSVR)-based observation function, through which an iterative regression strategy is used to deal with the distorted data caused by sensing noises, to improve the observation accuracy. At the same time, we integrate the observation to formulate the likelihood function, which effectively update the weights of particles. Thus, the particle effectiveness is enhanced to avoid “particle degeneracy” problem and improve localization accuracy. In order to validate the performance of the proposed localization algorithm, two different noise scenarios are investigated. The simulation results show that the proposed localization algorithm can efficiently improve the localization accuracy. In addition, the node-selection strategy can effectively select the subset of sensor nodes to improve the communication efficiency of the sensor network. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

2275 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Quantum Hybrid PSO Combined with Fuzzy k-NN Approach to Feature Selection and Cell Classification in Cervical Cancer Detection

by Abdullah M. Iliyasu and Chastine Fatichah

Sensors 2017, 17(12), 2935; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17122935 - 19 Dec 2017

Cited by 39 | Viewed by 5229

Abstract

A quantum hybrid (QH) intelligent approach that blends the adaptive search capability of the quantum-behaved particle swarm optimisation (QPSO) method with the intuitionistic rationality of traditional fuzzy k-nearest neighbours (Fuzzy k-NN) algorithm (known simply as the Q-Fuzzy approach) is proposed for [...] Read more.

A quantum hybrid (QH) intelligent approach that blends the adaptive search capability of the quantum-behaved particle swarm optimisation (QPSO) method with the intuitionistic rationality of traditional fuzzy k-nearest neighbours (Fuzzy k-NN) algorithm (known simply as the Q-Fuzzy approach) is proposed for efficient feature selection and classification of cells in cervical smeared (CS) images. From an initial multitude of 17 features describing the geometry, colour, and texture of the CS images, the QPSO stage of our proposed technique is used to select the best subset features (i.e., global best particles) that represent a pruned down collection of seven features. Using a dataset of almost 1000 images, performance evaluation of our proposed Q-Fuzzy approach assesses the impact of our feature selection on classification accuracy by way of three experimental scenarios that are compared alongside two other approaches: the All-features (i.e., classification without prior feature selection) and another hybrid technique combining the standard PSO algorithm with the Fuzzy k-NN technique (P-Fuzzy approach). In the first and second scenarios, we further divided the assessment criteria in terms of classification accuracy based on the choice of best features and those in terms of the different categories of the cervical cells. In the third scenario, we introduced new QH hybrid techniques, i.e., QPSO combined with other supervised learning methods, and compared the classification accuracy alongside our proposed Q-Fuzzy approach. Furthermore, we employed statistical approaches to establish qualitative agreement with regards to the feature selection in the experimental scenarios 1 and 3. The synergy between the QPSO and Fuzzy k-NN in the proposed Q-Fuzzy approach improves classification accuracy as manifest in the reduction in number cell features, which is crucial for effective cervical cancer detection and diagnosis. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

1460 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Lightweight Biometric Sensing for Walker Classification Using Narrowband RF Links

by Tong Liu and Zhuo-qian Liang

Sensors 2017, 17(12), 2815; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17122815 - 5 Dec 2017

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4147

Abstract

This article proposes a lightweight biometric sensing system using ubiquitous narrowband radio frequency (RF) links for path-dependent walker classification. The fluctuated received signal strength (RSS) sequence generated by human motion is used for feature representation. To capture the most discriminative characteristics of individuals, [...] Read more.

This article proposes a lightweight biometric sensing system using ubiquitous narrowband radio frequency (RF) links for path-dependent walker classification. The fluctuated received signal strength (RSS) sequence generated by human motion is used for feature representation. To capture the most discriminative characteristics of individuals, a three-layer RF sensing network is organized for building multiple sampling links at the most common heights of upper limbs, thighs, and lower legs. The optimal parameters of sensing configuration, such as the height of link location and number of fused links, are investigated to improve sensory data distinctions among subjects, and the experimental results suggest that the synergistic sensing by using multiple links can contribute a better performance. This is the new consideration of using RF links in building a biometric sensing system. In addition, two types of classification methods involving vector quantization (VQ) and hidden Markov models (HMMs) are developed and compared for closed-set walker recognition and verification. Experimental studies in indoor line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios are conducted to validate the proposed method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

3030 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Frequency-Locked Detector Threshold Setting Criteria Based on Mean-Time-To-Lose-Lock (MTLL) for GPS Receivers

by Tian Jin, Heliang Yuan, Na Zhao, Honglei Qin, Kewen Sun and Yuanfa Ji

Sensors 2017, 17(12), 2808; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17122808 - 4 Dec 2017

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4134

Abstract

Frequency-locked detector (FLD) has been widely utilized in tracking loops of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to indicate their locking status. The relation between FLD and lock status has been seldom discussed. The traditional PLL experience is not suitable for FLL. In this [...] Read more.

Frequency-locked detector (FLD) has been widely utilized in tracking loops of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to indicate their locking status. The relation between FLD and lock status has been seldom discussed. The traditional PLL experience is not suitable for FLL. In this paper, the threshold setting criteria for frequency-locked detector in the GPS receiver has been proposed by analyzing statistical characteristic of FLD output. The approximate probability distribution of frequency-locked detector is theoretically derived by using a statistical approach, which reveals the relationship between probabilities of frequency-locked detector and the carrier-to-noise ratio (C/N₀) of the received GPS signal. The relationship among mean-time-to-lose-lock (MTLL), detection threshold and lock probability related to C/N₀ can be further discovered by utilizing this probability. Therefore, a theoretical basis for threshold setting criteria in frequency locked loops for GPS receivers is provided based on mean-time-to-lose-lock analysis. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

5974 KiB

Open AccessArticle

ECG Signal De-noising and Baseline Wander Correction Based on CEEMDAN and Wavelet Threshold

by Yang Xu, Mingzhang Luo, Tao Li and Gangbing Song

Sensors 2017, 17(12), 2754; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17122754 - 28 Nov 2017

Cited by 96 | Viewed by 9265

Abstract

A novel electrocardiogram (ECG) signal de-noising and baseline wander correction method based on complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) and wavelet threshold is proposed. Although CEEMDAN is based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD), it represents a significant improvement of the [...] Read more.

A novel electrocardiogram (ECG) signal de-noising and baseline wander correction method based on complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) and wavelet threshold is proposed. Although CEEMDAN is based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD), it represents a significant improvement of the original EMD by overcoming the mode-mixing problem. However, there has been no previous study on using CEEMDAN to de-noise ECG signals, to the authors’ best knowledge. In the proposed method, the original noisy ECG signal is decomposed into a series of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) sorted from high to low frequency by CEEMDAN. Each IMF is then analyzed by the autocorrelation method to find out the first few high frequency IMFs containing random noise, and these IMFs should be de-noised by the wavelet threshold. The zero-crossing rate (ZCR) of all IMFs, including final residue, are computed, and the IMFs with ZCR less than a certain value are removed. Finally, the remaining IMFs are reconstructed to obtain the clean ECG signal. The proposed algorithm is validated through experiments using the MIT–BIH ECG databases, and the results show that the random noise in the ECG signal can be effectively suppressed, and at the same time the baseline wander can be corrected efficiently. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

14538 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Deep Recurrent Neural Networks for Human Activity Recognition

by Abdulmajid Murad and Jae-Young Pyun

Sensors 2017, 17(11), 2556; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17112556 - 6 Nov 2017

Cited by 373 | Viewed by 26206

Abstract

Adopting deep learning methods for human activity recognition has been effective in extracting discriminative features from raw input sequences acquired from body-worn sensors. Although human movements are encoded in a sequence of successive samples in time, typical machine learning methods perform recognition tasks [...] Read more.

Adopting deep learning methods for human activity recognition has been effective in extracting discriminative features from raw input sequences acquired from body-worn sensors. Although human movements are encoded in a sequence of successive samples in time, typical machine learning methods perform recognition tasks without exploiting the temporal correlations between input data samples. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) address this issue by using convolutions across a one-dimensional temporal sequence to capture dependencies among input data. However, the size of convolutional kernels restricts the captured range of dependencies between data samples. As a result, typical models are unadaptable to a wide range of activity-recognition configurations and require fixed-length input windows. In this paper, we propose the use of deep recurrent neural networks (DRNNs) for building recognition models that are capable of capturing long-range dependencies in variable-length input sequences. We present unidirectional, bidirectional, and cascaded architectures based on long short-term memory (LSTM) DRNNs and evaluate their effectiveness on miscellaneous benchmark datasets. Experimental results show that our proposed models outperform methods employing conventional machine learning, such as support vector machine (SVM) and k-nearest neighbors (KNN). Additionally, the proposed models yield better performance than other deep learning techniques, such as deep believe networks (DBNs) and CNNs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Graphical abstract

4007 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dimension-Factorized Range Migration Algorithm for Regularly Distributed Array Imaging

by Qijia Guo, Jie Wang, Tianying Chang and Hong-Liang Cui

Sensors 2017, 17(11), 2549; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17112549 - 5 Nov 2017

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4121

Abstract

The two-dimensional planar MIMO array is a popular approach for millimeter wave imaging applications. As a promising practical alternative, sparse MIMO arrays have been devised to reduce the number of antenna elements and transmitting/receiving channels with predictable and acceptable loss in image quality. [...] Read more.

The two-dimensional planar MIMO array is a popular approach for millimeter wave imaging applications. As a promising practical alternative, sparse MIMO arrays have been devised to reduce the number of antenna elements and transmitting/receiving channels with predictable and acceptable loss in image quality. In this paper, a high precision three-dimensional imaging algorithm is proposed for MIMO arrays of the regularly distributed type, especially the sparse varieties. Termed the Dimension-Factorized Range Migration Algorithm, the new imaging approach factorizes the conventional MIMO Range Migration Algorithm into multiple operations across the sparse dimensions. The thinner the sparse dimensions of the array, the more efficient the new algorithm will be. Advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated by comparison with the conventional MIMO Range Migration Algorithm and its non-uniform fast Fourier transform based variant in terms of all the important characteristics of the approaches, especially the anti-noise capability. The computation cost is analyzed as well to evaluate the efficiency quantitatively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

6686 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Remaining Useful Life Estimation of Insulated Gate Biploar Transistors (IGBTs) Based on a Novel Volterra k-Nearest Neighbor Optimally Pruned Extreme Learning Machine (VKOPP) Model Using Degradation Data

by Zhen Liu, Wenjuan Mei, Xianping Zeng, Chenglin Yang and Xiuyun Zhou

Sensors 2017, 17(11), 2524; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17112524 - 3 Nov 2017

Cited by 35 | Viewed by 5396

Abstract

The insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is a kind of excellent performance switching device used widely in power electronic systems. How to estimate the remaining useful life (RUL) of an IGBT to ensure the safety and reliability of the power electronics system is [...] Read more.

The insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is a kind of excellent performance switching device used widely in power electronic systems. How to estimate the remaining useful life (RUL) of an IGBT to ensure the safety and reliability of the power electronics system is currently a challenging issue in the field of IGBT reliability. The aim of this paper is to develop a prognostic technique for estimating IGBTs’ RUL. There is a need for an efficient prognostic algorithm that is able to support in-situ decision-making. In this paper, a novel prediction model with a complete structure based on optimally pruned extreme learning machine (OPELM) and Volterra series is proposed to track the IGBT’s degradation trace and estimate its RUL; we refer to this model as Volterra k-nearest neighbor OPELM prediction (VKOPP) model. This model uses the minimum entropy rate method and Volterra series to reconstruct phase space for IGBTs’ ageing samples, and a new weight update algorithm, which can effectively reduce the influence of the outliers and noises, is utilized to establish the VKOPP network; then a combination of the k-nearest neighbor method (KNN) and least squares estimation (LSE) method is used to calculate the output weights of OPELM and predict the RUL of the IGBT. The prognostic results show that the proposed approach can predict the RUL of IGBT modules with small error and achieve higher prediction precision and lower time cost than some classic prediction approaches. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Review

Jump to: Research, Other

18 pages, 3027 KiB

Open AccessReview

Signal Quality Improvement Algorithms for MEMS Gyroscope-Based Human Motion Analysis Systems: A Systematic Review

by Jiaying Du, Christer Gerdtman and Maria Lindén

Sensors 2018, 18(4), 1123; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18041123 - 6 Apr 2018

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 6650

Abstract

Motion sensors such as MEMS gyroscopes and accelerometers are characterized by a small size, light weight, high sensitivity, and low cost. They are used in an increasing number of applications. However, they are easily influenced by environmental effects such as temperature change, shock, [...] Read more.

Motion sensors such as MEMS gyroscopes and accelerometers are characterized by a small size, light weight, high sensitivity, and low cost. They are used in an increasing number of applications. However, they are easily influenced by environmental effects such as temperature change, shock, and vibration. Thus, signal processing is essential for minimizing errors and improving signal quality and system stability. The aim of this work is to investigate and present a systematic review of different signal error reduction algorithms that are used for MEMS gyroscope-based motion analysis systems for human motion analysis or have the potential to be used in this area. A systematic search was performed with the search engines/databases of the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, and Scopus. Sixteen papers that focus on MEMS gyroscope-related signal processing and were published in journals or conference proceedings in the past 10 years were found and fully reviewed. Seventeen algorithms were categorized into four main groups: Kalman-filter-based algorithms, adaptive-based algorithms, simple filter algorithms, and compensation-based algorithms. The algorithms were analyzed and presented along with their characteristics such as advantages, disadvantages, and time limitations. A user guide to the most suitable signal processing algorithms within this area is presented. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Other

Jump to: Research, Review

10 pages, 3567 KiB

Open AccessLetter

A Study of Quantifying Thickness of Ferromagnetic Pipes Based on Remote Field Eddy Current Testing

by Wei Zhang, Yibing Shi, Yanjun Li and Qingwang Luo

Sensors 2018, 18(9), 2769; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18092769 - 23 Aug 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3524

Abstract

Remote Field Eddy Current Testing (RFECT) has broad applications in ferromagnetic pipe testing due to the same testing sensitivity to inner and outer wall defects. However, how to quantify wall thickness in the RFECT of pipes is still a big problem. According to [...] Read more.

Remote Field Eddy Current Testing (RFECT) has broad applications in ferromagnetic pipe testing due to the same testing sensitivity to inner and outer wall defects. However, how to quantify wall thickness in the RFECT of pipes is still a big problem. According to researchers’ studies, a linear relationship exists between the wall thickness, permeability and conductivity of a pipe and the phase of the RFECT signal. Aiming to quantify wall thickness by using this linear function, it is necessary to further study the effects of pipe permeability and conductivity on the phase of the RFECT signal. When the product value of the permeability and the conductivity of a pipe remains constant, the univariate analysis and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) are employed to analyze the variations among the phase of the RFECT signal caused by different couples of permeability and conductivity. These variations are calibrated by using a nonlinear fitting method. Moreover, Multi-Frequency Eddy Current Testing (MFECT) is applied to inverse the permeability and conductivity of a pipe to compensate for the quantification analysis of wall thickness. The methods proposed in this paper are validated by analyzing the simulation signals and can improve the practicality of RFECT of ferromagnetic pipes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Signal and Information Processing)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Sensor Signal and Information Processing

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Special Issue Information

Keywords

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

Published Papers (54 papers)

Research

Review

Other

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI