Syllabus

University of Florida

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

EEL 6935, Section 2600 

Multimedia Communications and Networking

Fall 2004


Course Description

This course introduces fundamental technologies for video communications and networking.  We will address 1) how to efficiently represent and process video signals, and 2) how to deliver video signals over networks.  Topics to be covered include: introduction to video systems, Fourier analysis of video signals, properties of the human visual system, motion estimation, basic video compression techniques, video communication standards, and video transport over the Internet and wireless networks. 

Course Prerequisites

Textbook

Recommended Readings

Instructor:

Dr. Dapeng Wu
Office: NEB 431
Email: wu@ece.ufl.edu

TA:

Vignesh Krishnan
Email: vigneshk@ufl.edu

Meeting Time

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, period 2 (8:30 am - 9:20 am) 

Meeting Room

CHE 237 

Office Hours

Structure of the Course

The course consists of 39 lectures, 5 homework assignments, 1 project, and 1 exam.

This course is primarily a lecture course.   I cover all important material in lectures.  Since EEL 3135 and  EEL 5544 are  prerequisites, I assume some previous knowledge about DSP, probability theory and stochastic processes, and hence I will cover some material very quickly.  Thus, depending on what and how much you recall from earlier study, varying amounts of reading in introductory books on DSP, probability theory and stochastic processes (other than the course textbook) may be necessary; these readings are up to the student.  I will only give reading assignments from the course textbook.

Attending lecture is quite important as I may cover material not available in any book easily accessible to you. I use Powerpoint presentation during lecture.  Lecture notes will be posted on the course website before the class.  The lecture is to engage the students in independent thinking, critical thinking, and creative thinking, help the students organize the knowledge around essential concepts and fundamental principles, and develop conditionalized knowledge which tells them when, where and why a certain method is applicable to solving the problem they encounter.  

I do not intend for the WWW material to be a substitute for attending lecture since engaging the students in active thinking, making logical connections between the old knowledge and the new knowledge, and providing insights are the objectives of my lecture.   The lecture notes are posted on the web so that you can miss an occasional lecture and still catch up, and it makes taking notes easier.  To reward those who attend regularly, there will be some lecture-based material in the exam which is not available via the web.

Some problems in the exam will be similar to those in the homework.   As long as you work out the homework by yourself, you will be successful in the exam.   The problems in the exam are designed to prevent the students from memorizing the homework solutions without understanding the fundamental principles, concepts, and theories.   So, to prepare the exam, the first thing is to understand the material; then use the homework problems to test your understanding.

The class project is described here.

Course Outline

Course Objectives

Upon the completion of the course, the student should be able to

Handouts

Please find handouts here.

Course Policies

Useful links:

Grading:

Grades Percentage Dates
Homework 25% See the course calendar
Final exam 40% Dec. 13
Project proposal 5% Oct. 29
Project presentation 15% See the course calendar
Project report 15% Dec. 10

Homework:

Class Project:

The class project will be done in a group of at most four members.   Each project requires a proposal, classroom presentation and a final report.   The final report is expected to be in the format of a conference paper.    On Oct. 29, the project proposal (up to 2 pages) is due.  Your group will give a 30-minute oral presentation by the end of the course.  On Dec. 10, the final report (up to 10 pages) is due.   For details about the project, please read here.

Suggested topics for projects are listed here.

Course calendar can be found here.

Related courses in other schools:

Johns Hopkins University, Image Compression and Packet Video

Polytechnic University, Video Processing

Purdue University, Digital Video Systems

Stanford University, Digital Video Processing

University of California, Berkeley, Multimedia Signal Processing, Communications and Networking

University of Maryland, College Park, Digital Image Processing

University of Maryland, College Park, Multimedia Communication & Information Security: A Signal Processing Perspective

Standards:

ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) & HDTV (High Definition Television):

MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group):

Software:

HSI color model

Compression link: http://cchen1.et.ntust.edu.tw/compression/compression.htm


JOURNALS

Elsevier


IEEE


Kluwer


SPIE


Digital Video and Multimedia Standards Pages


Digital TV and DVD


Overview of the AVI format


Signal Processing Information Base (SPIB)

Computer Vision HomePage

3-D for Everyone


Public Domain Image Databases

CMU Database