Category: Journal Papers
Video-based Automatic Incident Detection for Intelligent Transportation systems: The Outdoor Environmental Challenges
Video-based automatic incident detection (AID) systems are increasingly being used in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Video-based AID is a promising method of incident detection. However, the accuracy of video-based AID is heavily affected by environmental factors such as shadows, snow, rain, and glare. This paper presents a review of the different work done in the literature to detect outdoor environmental factors, namely, static shadows, snow, rain, and glare. Once these environmental conditions are detected, they can be compensated for, and hence, the accuracy of alarms detected by video-based AID systems will be enhanced. Based on the presented review, this paper will highlight potential research directions to address gaps that currently exist in detecting outdoor environmental conditions. This will lead to an overall enhancement in the reliability of video-based AID systems and, hence, pave the road for more usage of these systems in the future. Last, this paper suggests new contributions in the form of new suggested algorithmic ideas to detect environmental factors that affect AID systems accuracy.
Published in:
Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Transactions on (Volume:9 , Issue: 2 )
- Page(s):
- 349 – 360
- ISSN :
- 1524-9050
- INSPEC Accession Number:
- 10034942
- DOI:
- 10.1109/TITS.2008.915644
- Date of Publication :
- June 2008
- Date of Current Version :
- 06 June 2008
- Issue Date :
- June 2008
- Sponsored by :
- IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society
- Publisher:
- IEEE
Mohamed Shehata, Jun Cai, Muzamil Pervez, Tyson Burr, Wael Badawy, Ahmad Radmanesh, “Video-based Automatic Incident Detection for Intelligent Transportation systems: The Outdoor Environmental Challenges“, the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Volume: 9, Issue: 2, pp. 349-360, June 2008.
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Originally posted 2018-03-23 06:02:00.
A Robust Video-Based Algorithm for Detecting Snow Movement in Traffic Scenes
Abstract
Video-based Automatic Incident Detection (AID) systems are widely deployed in many cities for detecting traffic incidents to provide smoother, safer and congestion free traffic flow. However, the accuracy of an AID system operating in an outdoor environment suffers from high false alarm rates due to environmental factors. These factors include snow movement, static shadow and static glare on the roads. In this paper, a robust real-time algorithm is proposed to detect snow movement in video streams to improve the rate of detection. This is done by having the AID system reducing its sensitivity in the areas that have snow movements. The feasibility of the proposed algorithm has been evaluated using traffic videos captured from several cameras at the City of Calgary.
Jun Cai, Mohamed Shehata, Wael Badawy, “A Robust Video-Based Algorithm for Detecting Snow Movement in Traffic Scenes”, The Journal of VLSI Signal Processing Systems for Signal, Image, and Video Technology, Special Issue on Signal Processing Systems, Volume 56, Numbers 2-3 / September, 2009, pp. 307-326.
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Originally posted 2018-03-22 10:57:00.
Towards an H.264/AVC HW/SW Integrated Solution: An Efficient VBSME Architecture
Abstract:
This paper presents an efficient real-time variable block size motion estimation architecture. The proposed architecture provides motion vectors for each 16 times 16 block and its 40 sub-blocks. The proposed architecture is a single-instruction multiple-data architecture integrated with embedded SRAMs on one chip. The architecture has been prototyped using Xilinx Virtex-4 XC4VSX35-10 field-programmable gate array. It processes 30-CIF fps using 71-MHz clock frequency. Its maximum clock frequencyuency is 187.7 MHz and the maximum throughput is 20 4CIF fps. The prototyped architecture has 175 k gates and 18 kbits embedded SRAM.
Published in:
Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, IEEE Transactions on (Volume:55 , Issue: 9 )
- Page(s):
- 912 – 916
- ISSN :
- 1549-7747
- INSPEC Accession Number:
- 10185530
- DOI:
- 10.1109/TCSII.2008.923398
- Date of Publication :
- 23 May 2008
- Date of Current Version :
- 29 August 2008
- Issue Date :
- Sept. 2008
- Sponsored by :
- IEEE Circuits and Systems Society
- Publisher:
- IEEE
Mohammed Sayed, Wael Badawy, and Graham Jullien, “Towards an H.264/AVC HW/SW Integrated Solution: An Efficient VBSME Architecture”, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, Volume: 55, Issue: 9, pp. 912-916, Sept. 2008.
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Originally posted 2018-03-21 05:37:00.
An Architecture for Programmable Multi-core IP Accelerated Platform with an Advanced Application of H.264 Codec Implementation
Abstract
A new integrated programmable platform architecture is presented, with the support of multiple accelerators and extensible processing cores. An advanced application for this architecture is to facilitate the implementation of H.264 baseline profile video codec. The platform architecture employs the novel concept of virtual socket and optimized memory access to increase the efficiency for video encoding. The proposed architecture is mapped on an integrated FPGA device, Annapolis WildCard-II™ or WildCard-4™, for verification. According to the evaluation under different configurations, the results show that the overall performance of the architecture, with the integrated accelerators, can sufficiently meet the real-time encoding requirement for H.264 BP at basic levels, and achieve about 2–5.5 and 1–3 dB improvement, in terms of PSNR, as compared with MPEG-2 MP and MPEG-4 SP, respectively. The architecture is highly extensible, and thus can be utilized to benefit the development of multi-standard video codec beyond the description in this paper.
Yifeng Qiu, Wael Badawy and Robert Turney, “An Architecture for Programmable Multi-core IP Accelerated Platform with an Advanced Application of H.264 Codec Implementation” Journal of Signal Processing Systems, Volume 57, Number 2 / November, 2009, 123-137.
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Originally posted 2018-03-20 05:13:00.
Interpolation-Free Fractional-Pixel Motion Estimation Algorithms with Efficient Hardware Implementation`
Originally posted 2018-03-19 19:43:00.
A Prototyping Virtual Socket System-On-Platform Architecture with a Novel ACQPPS Motion Estimator for H.264 Video Encoding Applications
Abstract
H.264 delivers the streaming video in high quality for various applications. The coding tools involved in H.264, however, make its video codec implementation very complicated, raising the need for algorithm optimization, and hardware acceleration. In this paper, a novel adaptive crossed quarter polar pattern search (ACQPPS) algorithm is proposed to realize an enhanced inter prediction for H.264. Moreover, an efficient prototyping system-on-platform architecture is also presented, which can be utilized for a realization of H.264 baseline profile encoder with the support of integrated ACQPPS motion estimator and related video IP accelerators. The implementation results show that ACQPPS motion estimator can achieve very high estimated image quality comparable to that from the full search method, in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), while keeping the complexity at an extremely low level. With the integrated IP accelerators and optimized techniques, the proposed system-on-platform architecture sufficiently supports the H.264 real-time encoding with the low cost.
Yifeng Qiu and Wael Badawy, “A Prototyping Virtual Socket System-On-Platform Architecture with a Novel ACQPPS Motion Estimator for H.264 Video Encoding Applications” EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems, Volume 2009
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Originally posted 2018-03-13 23:56:00.
Efficient Variable Block Size Selection for AVC Low Bitrate Applications
ABSTRACT
The Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard proposes the usage of Variable Block Size (VBS) motion-compensated prediction and mode decision aiming for an optimized Rate-Distortion (R-D) performance. Unlike Fixed Block Size (FBS) motion-compensated prediction, where all regions of the pictures are treated similarly in terms of temporal prediction, VBS increases the efficiency of encoding by allowing more active regions to be represented with more bits than less active ones. The main concern regarding the usage of VBS motion-compensated prediction is the dramatic increase it adds to the encoder computational requirements, which not only prevents the encoder from satisfying real-time constraints, but also makes it impractical for hardware implementation. This paper presents an efficient VBS selection scheme, which can be applied to any VBS Motion Estimation (ME) module, leading to significant reduction in its computational requirements with minor loss in the quality of the reconstructed picture. The computational requirements reduction is achieved by minimizing the number of required ME searches and simplifying the Mode Decision (MD) operation. In order to meet different applications’ demands, the proposed algorithm can be adjusted to function at any of three operating points, trading off computational requirements with R-D performance. In the paper, the algorithm is described in detail, focusing on the theoretical computational requirements savings. This theoretical analysis is then supported with simulation results performed on three benchmark video sequences with various types of motion. Keywords-H.264/AVC, motion estimation, variable block size.
Reference: Ihab Amer, Wael Badawy, Graham Jullien, Adrian Chirila-Rus, Robert Turney, and Rana Hamed, “Efficient Variable Block Size Selection for AVC Low Bitrate Applications,” IARIA on-line journals, 2010 Vol. 1&2, July 2010.
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Originally posted 2018-03-12 14:49:00.
Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR): A State-of-the-Art Review
Abstract:
Automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) is the extraction of vehicle license plate information from an image or a sequence of images. The extracted information can be used with or without a database in many applications, such as electronic payment systems (toll payment, parking fee payment), and freeway and arterial monitoring systems for traffic surveillance. The ALPR uses either a color, black and white, or infrared camera to take images. The quality of the acquired images is a major factor in the success of the ALPR. ALPR as a real-life application has to quickly and successfully process license plates under different environmental conditions, such as indoors, outdoors, day or night time. It should also be generalized to process license plates from different nations, provinces, or states. These plates usually contain different colors, are written in different languages, and use different fonts; some plates may have a single color background and others have background images. The license plates can be partially occluded by dirt, lighting, and towing accessories on the car. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art techniques for ALPR. We categorize different ALPR techniques according to the features they used for each stage, and compare them in terms of pros, cons, recognition accuracy, and processing speed. Future forecasts of ALPR are given at the end.
Published in:
Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Transactions on (Volume:23 , Issue: 2 )
- Page(s):
- 311 – 325
- ISSN :
- 1051-8215
- INSPEC Accession Number:
- 13270696
- DOI:
- 10.1109/TCSVT.2012.2203741
- Date of Publication :
- 07 June 2012
- Date of Current Version :
- 01 February 2013
- Issue Date :
- Feb. 2013
- Sponsored by :
- IEEE Circuits and Systems Society
- Publisher:
- IEEE
- Download the paper here Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR): A State-of-the-Art Review
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Reference: Shan Du; Ibrahim, M.; Shehata, M.; Badawy, W., “Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR): A State-of-the-Art Review,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol.23, no.2, pp.311,325, Feb. 2013.
Originally posted 2018-03-11 07:19:00.
On-Chip Electrical Field Sensing For Lab-On-A-Chip Applications
Authors: Yehya H. Ghallab, and Wael Badawy
Abstract: This paper presents a novel CMOS electric field sensor, termed as a Differential Electric Field Sensitive Field Effect Transistor (DeFET). It’s based on a standard 0.18μm CMOS technology. The DeFET shows a sensitivity of 76 μA/V/μm. Also, the DefET’s theory of operation is presented and discussed. Both the experimental and simulation results confirm the DeFET’s theory of operation is presented.
Link to the paper
Link to download the ECS Trans.-2006-Badawy-1-15
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Reference: Yehya H. Ghallab, and Wael Badawy, “On-chip Electrical Field Sensing for Lab-on-a-chip applications“, ElectroChemical Transaction, 1, (28) 1 (2006), pp. 1-15.
Originally posted 2018-03-10 23:40:00.
Hierarchical Adaptive Structure Mesh for Efficient Video Coding
Wael Badawy, “Hierarchical Adaptive Structure Mesh for Efficient Video Coding,” The International Journal on Image and Video Processing, Vol. 17, November 2001