On-line Vehicle Motion Estimation from Visual Terrain Information Part II: Ground Velocity and Position Estimation

An algorithm, combining velocity/height estimates, obtained from an airborne body fixed image shift estimator with auxiliary on-board measurements and sparsely stored terrain profile information constitutes an entirely passive autonomous navigation system suitable for moderate-g flight missions. Two versions are addressed. The "naive estimator," in which altitude estimates are multiplied by velocity/height estimaters, yields ground velocity. Position, obtained by integration, diverges with time. The "extended Kalman filter" (EKF) version, in which velocity and position are defined as state space components, locks on the stored terrain profile and does not diverge with time. It degenerates into the "naive estimator" if the terrain is completely flat. Numerical examples indicate excellent performance potential of the EKF estimator.     

Speech Data Rate Reduction Part I: Applicability of Modern Estimation Theory

Efficient coding of continuous speech signals for digital representation has attracted much interest in recent years. The underlying aim of efficient coding methods is to reduce the channel capacity required to represent a signal to meet a specific reconstruction fidelity criterion. To achieve this objective, modern speech data compression techniques rely on two very similar procedures. One procedure uses predictive deconvolution which subtracts from the current signal value that portion which can be predicted from its past and thus removes redundancy in the speech by removing sequential correlation. The signal thus requires fewer bits for equivalent quantization error. The second procedure involves identification of a complete mathematical model of the speech producing mechanism. This involves determination of the characteristics of the source that drives this transfer function. Data reduction is again achieved since the rate of change of the parameters of the speech model is much smaller than the rate of change of the speech waveform. This paper develops these data reduction procedures in terms of modern estimation theory, specifically a Kalman filter model, and illustrates the utility of this model as an analysis tool by means of an example based on a uniform tube which provides a qualitative assessment of the potential of the technique for application to real speech signals.     

Observations of the Sun at Vacuum- Ultraviolet Wavelengths from Space. Part I: Concepts and Instrumentation

Space Science Reviews - Studies of the high-temperature solar atmosphere are to a large extent based on spectroscopic observations of emission lines and continuum radiation in the...