SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for December
-
Creating a mobile network with mobile towers and limited bandwidths
Mon, Dec 03, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: General Paul J. Kern
The Cohen GroupABSTRACT: How the Army is solving the problem and what it might mean to commercial communications.BIOGRAPHY: General Paul Kern joined The Cohen Group as a Senior Counselor in January, 2005. In addition, he holds the Class of 1950 Chair for Advanced Technologies at West Point, is an Advisor to Battelle Memorial Institute and serves on the Board of Directors of iRobot Corporation, CoVant Technologies LLC and EDO Corporation.He concluded his more than 40-year career in the United States Army when he retired as Commanding General, Army Material Command (AMC). In that capacity, and earlier as Commander of the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized), General Kern left his impact on the Army's future as he led a drive to digitize and transform its warfighting capabilities. He won wide respect for his efforts to direct supply chain improvements, maintain field readiness, and modernize weapons systems throughout the Army while still controlling costs.In June 2004, General Kern undertook a vastly different responsibility when Secretary Rumsfeld tapped him to lead the military's internal investigation into the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a tough assignment that he handled with skill.General Kern's career has also had stops in the Secretary of Defense office in Washington and several field units. As the Senior Military Assistant to Secretary of Defense William Perry, General Kern was instrumental in ensuring that the Secretary's guidance was implemented throughout the Department and in handling the most sensitive decisions for the Secretary. During that tenure he traveled with Secretary Perry to more than 70 countries, meeting numerous heads of state, foreign ministers and international defense leaders. He participated in U.S. operations in Haiti, Rwanda, Zaire and the Balkans, and helped to promote military relations in Central and Eastern Europe, South America, China, and the Middle East.General Kern had three combat tours with two tours in Vietnam as a platoon leader and troop commander, and he commanded the Second Brigade of the 24th Infantry in Desert Shield/Desert Storm.HOST: Solomon Golomb, sgolomb@usc.edu, EEB 504A, x07333Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Dr. Amnon Yariv (Munushian Visiting Seminar Series)
Mon, Dec 03, 2007 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Amnon YarivCalifornia Institute of Technology"Slow Light and Dark Modes"AbstractThe talk will consider the theoretical and experimental basis for the recent interest in major slowing down of the group velocity of light (Slow Light). It will review the phenomenon in the atomic domain where it is linked intimately to that of Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT). The emphasis will be on Slow Light in artificial dielectric structures such as Coupled Resonators Waveguides (CROWS) and on recent theoretical results from our group on Slow Light and Dark Modes phenomena in bi-periodic optical waveguides.BioAmnon Yariv received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1954, 1956, and 1958, respectively. In 1959, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. In 1964, he joined the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, as an Associate Professor of electrical engineering, becoming
a Professor in 1966. In 1980, he became the Thomas G. Myers Professor of electrical engineering and applied physics. In 1996, he became the Martin and Eileen Summerfield Professor of applied physics and Professor of electrical engineering. On the technical and scientific
sides, he took part (with various co-workers) in the discovery of a number of early solid-state laser systems, in the original formulation of the theory of nonlinear quantum optics; in proposing and explaining mode-locked ultrashort-pulse lasers, GaAs optoelectronics; in proposing and demonstrating semiconductor-based integrated optics technology; in pioneering
the field of phase conjugate optics; and in proposing and demonstrating the semiconductor
distributed feedback laser. He has published widely in the laser and optics fields and has written a number of basic texts in quantum electronics, optics, and quantum mechanics.
Dr. Yariv is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences.Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Ericka Lieberknecht
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
List-Decoding of Error-Correcting Codes with Applications to Compressed Sensing
Wed, Dec 05, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Dr. Farzad Parvaresh, Postdoctoral Fellow, California Institute of TechnologyABSTRACT: We consider the problem of designing codes and decoding algorithms for the adversarial channel. We show that the ultimate error-correction radius of 1 - R, where R is the rate of the code, can be achieved constructively with polynomial-time decoding, in the list-decoding sense.Our codes and list-decoders are based on two key ideas. The first is the transition from bivariate polynomial interpolation, pioneered by Sudan and Guruswami-Sudan, to multivariate interpolation decoding. The second idea is to part ways with Reed-Solomon codes, for which numerous prior attempts at breaking the rate barrier in the worst-case were unsuccessful. Rather than devising a better list-decoder for Reed-Solomon codes, we devise better codes. In our codes, instead of evaluating certain functions at rational points of a curve, we evaluate the rational points themselves, viewed as pairs of polynomials over a subfield, at certain elements of the subfield. This construction leads to polynomial-time error-correction up to the radius of 1 - O(R log(1/R)). Utilizing the folding technique of Guruswami and Rudra one can improve the decoding bound up to 1 - R - \epsilon, for any positive \epsilon.Finally, we borrow ideas from the list-decoding of Reed-Solomon codes to improve the state of the art in the area of compressed sensing. We show that a deterministic Fourier measurement of the signal with a decoding algorithm due to Coppersmith and Sudan can reach the ultimate threshold of sparsity to number-of-measurements for block sparse signals in polynomial time. We will also point out connections of this to DNA microarrays.BIO: Farzad Parvaresh was born in Isfahan, Iran, in 1978.He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2001, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering form the University of California, San Diego, in 2003 and 2007, respectively. He is currently a post doctoral scholar at the Center for Mathematics of Information, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. His research interests include error-correcting codes, algebraic decoding algorithms, information theory, networks, and fun math problems. Dr. Parvaresh was a recipient of the best paper award from the 46th Annual IEEE symposium on foundations of computer science (FOCS'05).Host: Prof. Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
VLSI Architecture Design for Algebraic Soft-decision
Mon, Dec 10, 2007 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Professor Xinmiao Zhang, Case Western Reserve UniversityAbstract: Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are among the most extensively used error-correcting codes in digital communication and storage systems. Recently, significant advancements have been made on algebraic soft-decision decoding (ASD) of RS codes. By incorporating the reliability information from the channel into an algebraic interpolation process, substantial coding gain can be achieved by these algorithms with a complexity that is polynomial with respect to the codeword length.ASD algorithms have two major steps: the interpolation and the factorization. In this talk, we focus on the factorization step and present complexity-reducing schemes and efficient VLSI implementation architectures for this step. The factorization can be implemented by an iterative algorithm, which mainly consists of root computations over finite fields and polynomial updating. Traditionally, root computations over finite fields are implemented by exhaustive search, which leads to very long latency. Based on the observation that the root-order in the first iteration is usually close to the degree of the polynomial and it only changes with very small probability in later iterations, we proposed prediction-based root computation schemes. Employing the proposed schemes, the roots can be found by simple direct computations if the prediction is correct. Since the prediction failure rates are very low, our schemes can bring significant speedup to the root computation. The involved polynomial updating is straightforward. However, a large number of polynomial coefficients need to be updated. In order to increase the speed, we employed a root-order-dependent parallel processing approach. Furthermore, a novel coefficient storage and transfer scheme is proposed to resolve the data dependency caused by the parallel processing and minimize the memory requirement. Applying our proposed schemes to the factorization of a (255, 239) RS decoding, a speedup of 228% can be achieved, while the area requirement has been reduced to less than 1/3.Bio: Xinmiao Zhang received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, in 1997 and 2000, respectively. She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, in 2005. Since then, she has been with Case Western Reserve University, where she is currently a Timothy E. and Allison L. Schroeder Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her research interests include VLSI architecture design for communications, cryptography, and digital signal processing.Ms. Zhang is the recipient of the Best Paper Award at ACM Great Lake Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2004. She also won the First Prize in Student Paper Contest at the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers 2004. She is the co-editor of the book "Wireless Security and Cryptography: Specifications and Implementations" (CRC Press, 2007) and the guest editor for Springer MONET Journal Special Issue on "Next Generation Hardware Architectures for Secure Mobile Computing". She has served on technical program committees of GLSVLSI and the reviewer committees of IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS).Host: Prof. Keith Chugg, chugg@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Multi-scale Adaptive Image Representations
Tue, Dec 11, 2007 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Doru C. Balcan,
Carnegie Mellon UniversityAbstract:
Multi-scale representations, such as those based on wavelets, have been successful in efficiently
describing intrinsic structure in images, and consequently have lead to the emergence of excellent
image coders. Nevertheless, using any fixed representation limits the best achievable performance
when encoding images of a given class, because all statistical information about that class is simply
ignored. An adaptive representation would then be more appropriate in this setting. One such
example is independent component analysis (ICA), a statistical method that computes a linear
representation whose coefficients have minimum entropy.
In this talk, I will introduce a hybrid image representation method called Multi-scale ICA, which
derives an adaptive basis for each of the wavelet decomposition sub-bands. A direct comparison of
the rate-distortion curves obtained by coefficient scalar quantization to various levels of precision
shows the improvement in terms of efficiency over the wavelet representation. One other merit of this
approach is its potential use to derive adaptive representations for large-size images, where existing
methods fail because of computational and sample complexity limitations. We can therefore interpret
the proposed method both as a nonparametric adaptive extension of wavelet representations, and as
a multi-scale generalization of ICA. This is joint work with Michael Lewicki.Speaker Bio:
Doru C. Balcan received the B.S. degree in computer science, in 2000, and the M.S. degree in
applied computer science, in 2002, from the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Bucharest,
Romania. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. studies in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA. His research is focused on developing algorithms for efficient and robust signal
processing and coding. More exactly, he is interested in techniques that exploit the mathematical
structure of problems commonly occurring in image and audio encoding, to produce representations
that are compact, resilient to noise, and fast to compute.Hosted by: Prof: C-C Jay KuoLocation: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Theoretical Limits and Practical Methods in Classical and Quantum Communications
Mon, Dec 17, 2007 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Alexei Ashikhmin
Communications and Statistical Sciences Department
Bell Labs, Alcatel-LucentAbstract: The talk is in three parts covering some areas of my recent research. Information-theoretic and Coding Bounds
I will present a general method, called the polynomial method, for deriving information-theoretic and coding bounds. The method is based on results from harmonic analysis and the theory of orthogonal polynomials. Following this, I will show that an application of this method leads to an improvement of the Shannon, Gallager, and Berlekamp (1967) bound on the reliability function of the Gaussian channel. This was the first improvement of the bound to be made after a period of 30 years. Further applications of this method lead to derivations of the best currently known bounds on the minimum distance of quantum codes, probability of undetected error, and other parameters. The method of EXIT functions
EXIT functions are a powerful tool for the design and analysis of iteratively decodable codes, such as TURBO and Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes. In this part of the talk, I will give a formal definition of EXIT functions, consider applications of EXIT functions to the design of capacity achieving LDPC codes and capacity achieving communication schemes for multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) ergodic channel. Quantum Error Correction
It is well known that quantum computers have the potential to make radical improvements in performance over classical computational devices. Unfortunately, quantum computers are inherently vulnerable to environmental and control errors, which thus makes quantum error correction a very important subject. This part of the talk begins with a brief introduction into the theory of quantum computation and quantum error correction (no knowledge of quantum mechanics is required). Following this, I will present my recent results on the fidelity of a quantum automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol. The talk concludes with a brief summary of other results I have obtained in the area of quantum error correction. Biography: Alexei Ashikhmin is a member of technical staff in the Communications and Statistical Sciences Department, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Institute of Information Transmission Problems, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, in 1994. In 1996 he was a visiting researcher of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. From 1997 to 1999, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Modeling, Algorithms, and Informatics Group of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Since 1999 he has been with Bell Laboratories.His research interests include classical and quantum information theory and communication theory. From 2003 to 2006 Dr. Ashikhmin served as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. In 2002, Dr. Ashikhmin received Bell Laboratories President's Gold Award for breakthrough research in wireless communications. In 2005 Dr. Ashikhmin was honored by the IEEE Communications S.O. Rice Prize Paper Award for work on LDPC codes for information transmission with multiple antennas. Host: Michael Neely, mjneely@usc.edu, EEB 520, x03505Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Encoding Circuits For Block and Convolutional Quantum Codes
Tue, Dec 18, 2007 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Markus Grassl
Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Innsbruck, AustriaAbstract: Quantum error correction is a key ingredient for the realization of a quantum computer. In my talk I will give an overview of the relations between classical and quantum error-correcting codes (QECCs), illustrated by several constructions for QECCs. I will also address the problem of computing encoding circuits for the quantum codes. In the case of quantum block codes we obtain efficient encoding circuits. For convolutional quantum codes, the algorithm first allows to decide whether the code is catastrophic or not, corresponding to encoding circuits of infinite or finite depth, respectively. Then every catastrophic code can be converted into a non-catastrophic one with the same rate.This talk is for a general audience and does not assume prior knowledge of quantum mechanics.Biography: Markus Grassl received his diploma degree in Computer Science in 1994 and his doctoral degree in 2001, both from the Fakultaet fuer Informatik, Universitaet Karlsruhe (TH), Germany. His dissertation was on constructive and algorithmic aspects of quantum error-correcting codes.From 1994 to 2007 he has been a member of the Institut fuer Algorithmen und Kognitive Systeme, Fakultaet fuer Informatik, Universitaet Karlsruhe (TH), Germany. Currently he is a senior scientist at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Austrian Academy of Sciences, Innsbruck, Austria.His research interests include quantum computation, focusing on quantum error-correcting codes, and methods of computer algebra in algebraic coding theory. He maintains www.codetables.de which provides information on good quantum and classical block codes.Host: Todd Brun, tbrun@usc.edu, EEB 502, x03503Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
