Signal Processing for Multimedia and Telecommunications

Research focus

The Peer review has evaluated this group as Excellent

Information technology requires a multitude of advanced and intelligent signal processing solutions to extract all sorts of information from multimodal data; to efficiently transport it anyway and anywhere; and to promptly deliver it not just undisrupted, but enriched whenever necessary. The group of Signal Processing for Multimedia and Telecommunications focuses on these needs by providing signal processing expertise for image and audio analysis/processing applications and for advanced wireless communications systems. Multimedia processing is a challenging research area with a wide variety of focuses, such as computer vision, pattern recognition, image and sound analysis and processing. It requires a solid background in numerous disciplines such as projective and differential geometry, partial differential equations, nonlinear optimization, nonlinear dynamics, wave propagation physics, deterministic and statistical signal processing, to mention a few. This field is rich with potential applications in various fields of interest, ranging from security, surveillance, industrial quality control, content production, development of computer-human interfaces, entertainment and gaming, immersive communications, biomedical applications, etc. Founded about 12 years ago, the Image and Sound Processing (ISP) laboratory (www-dsp.elet.polimi.it/ispg) of the Signal Processing for Multimedia and Telecommunications group has developed a strong expertise in all these areas of application, with particular emphasis on multi-view analysis for 3D reconstruction (objects, faces, environments) and behavioural analysis (gesture classification and recognition); video coding (Scalable Video Coding, Distributed Source Coding); pattern recognition (2D and 3D face recognition, object localization, tracking and classification for security applications); sound analysis (localization, separation, tracking and classification of sound sources); sound production (musical sound synthesis/processing) and processing (sound propagation modelling, real-time environmental acoustic rendering); in-solid vibrational analysis (touch localization/tracking for computer-human interaction). The ISP lab’s activity is oriented towards industrial applications as well as EC-funded projects. In addition to the numerous industrial projects, in fact, ISPG has contributed to 14 European projects over the past 10 years. Two of them were promoted and successfully coordinated by ISPG: IST ORIGAMI, a 4 MEuro project that involved BBC R&D, Framestore CFC; and other five international partners, concerning applications of computer vision techniques to movie production; IST ALMA, a 2 MEuro project that involved 4 international partners, aimed at developing advanced solutions for automated sound synthesis through physical modelling. Part of the ISP lab can count on a strong and long-standing collaboration with the Section of Informatics, with which it promoted in the Como Campus a novel orientation of the second-level degree in Informatics called “Sound Design and Engineering”, entirely taught in English. Advanced signal processing methods have played a key role in the exceptional advances of wireless communications of the past few years. The early cooperation of the Signal Processing line with Telecommunication industry in 1997 motivated the creation of Wireless System Lab (WisyLab) to begin a new and rich thread of activities oriented towards signal processing for wireless communication and the related industrial applications. The main goal of these activities has been the development of novel methodologies for the processing of multiple signals originated by multiple antennas and/or users (www.elet.polimi.it/dps/tlc). These activities have produced quite a 198 relevant number of patents, journal/conference articles or book monographies. More specifically, the areas where the WisyLab is widely acknowledged for are structured channel estimation and equalization, multiple antennas and interference mitigation, adaptive techniques for fast-varying channels, high resolution estimation and localization, resource allocation and competition/cooperation in distributed systems. The WisyLab contributed to the development of the first European prototype of base station, fully GSM standard compliant, equipped with a self-calibrating array of 8 antennas, which was announced by ITALTEL in 1999. Close cooperation of the research with manufacturing led to the development of the multi-user receivers with adaptive antennas for UMTS-TDD and TD-SCDMA, and to the evolution for WiMAX. The Group has contributed to the development of new methodologies for wireless localization, first for GSM, and later for ultra-wide band and wireless sensor networks. In the year 2006, the WisyLab’s expertise on reconfigurable software-defined radio and on multiple antenna MIMO systems brought to the creation of WisyTech (www.wisytech.com), a spin off of the Politecnico di Milano and the National Research Council (CNR), which is focused on the development of software-defined radio instrumentation for WiMAX and MIMO systems targeted to the international market. The WisyLab group is very active in many international exchange programs with several other academic and research groups.

Dipartimento di afferenza

Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione (DEI)

Docenti afferenti

Umberto Spagnolini (full professor)
Stefano Tubaro (full professor)
Augusto Sarti (associate professor)
Marco Marcon (assistant professor)
Monica Nicoli (assistant professor)