EC4430 Multimedia Information and Communications

The course objective is to present the essentials of real-time communication of digital multimedia (audio, video and text) information by bringing together topics from digital signal processing (information processing), digital communications (information transmission and reception), and computer networking (information distribution). Algorithms for compression of multimedia information are presented. Related international standards such as G.728, JPEG, MPEG, MP3, LZW, and IS95 are discussed. Major topics include digital representation and compression of multimedia information, transmission (storage) and distribution of compressed information, and end-to-end delivery issues such as loss, reliability, security, and encryption of multimedia information. 

Prerequisite

EC3400 or instructor's consent.

Lecture Hours

3

Lab Hours

2

Security Clearance Required

• Secret

Course Learning Outcomes

·       Given a message, the student will be able to determine the Huffman and arithmetic codes if symbol statistical characteristics are available, or construct a Lempel-Ziv dictionary and calculate the compression gain.

·       Given the image format and luminance/chrominance values, the student will be able to apply the DCT or wavelet decomposition algorithm, analyze signal loss, determine the JPEG codes, and compute the compression gain.

·       Given the frame rate, frame size, and color format, the student will be able to propose a schematic for video compression using MPEG/H.264 standard that addresses motion compensation, bit rate, delay, frame prediction and signal quality.

·       Given the sampling rate and bit resolution, the student will be able to develop speech and audio compression schemes utilizing current standards (G.729.1, G.719, MP3) while addressing the bit rate, delay and quality of service issues.

·       Given the general channel characteristics including capacity and error rates, the student will be able to propose schemes to insure error robustness and resilience of multimedia signals.

·       Given the quality of service requirements of multimedia information, the student will be able to select appropriate networking protocols and distribution mechanisms for timely, accurate delivery.

·       Given a secret message and a cover object (image, video, speech, text), the student will be able to propose a steganographic covert communication scheme (as an alternative or in addition to a cryptographic scheme) consisting of effective embedding and extraction algorithms to ensure message security and robustness.

·       Given the need for defending against covert communications, the student will be able to propose attack schemes for forensic steganalysis consisting of detecting the presence of stego objects, breaking the covert channel, and extracting the secret message.