Characterization of dispersion curves in plate-like structures is possible with guided Lamb waves. In this research, experimental development of dispersion curves relies on the spectrogram, which suffers from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Reassignment is capable of localizing ill--defined dispersion curves. Unfortunately, reassignment also introduces spurious components, which reduce reassignment performance. This research develops an algorithm that provides both localization of dispersion curves and elimination of spurious components. To achieve this, an alternative formulation of reassignment called differential reassignment is modified and superimposed with nonlinear anisotropic diffusion. This study first examines reassignment and diffusion components individually. Three different versions of differential reassignment are considered, two of which are modifications explicitly derived in this research. The combined algorithm is then applied to reassign experimentally measured spectrograms, leading to a significant increase in clarity and notch detection performance.

The goal of this work is to design and fabricate an autonomous acoustic recording system which is low cost, reconfigurable and portable for acoustic research. The system consists of four components, including a compact single-board computer (Celeron 1G), a 12-bit A/D converter (PCM-3718HO), a 20/40 dB gain amplifier and an useful power management circuit board. C and LabVIEW programs with multiple threads are developed to control the I/O's, digitize the underwater acoustic signals and stream data to the hard disk continuously. Currently, the throughput of data stream attains to 83 kHz. It were tested by six significant experiments to show its feasibility. At first, taking the function generator as signal source to verify no distortion caused by the system. Two ITC-6050C hydrophones are connected to the system as the receivers. The system was tested with experimental propeller producing broadband noise to calibrate the hydrophones in the experimental sink. To verify their performance, the receivers also work with the calibrated one B & K 8104 for reference. In order to understand the influence of self-noise, the system is planned to record known signal producing by hydrophone CTG-0708. By repeating similar calibration experiment, the system operates with an autonomous recording system Bioacoustic probe to understand what deficiency we should improve afterward. Further, a field test was conducted in the designated natural laboratory of shallow bay area. Post-processing of the data resulted in range-frequency plot shows that the interference pattern reported in the literature was captured. According to above-mentioned tesing, the system can be applied to underwater acoustics. This system, connected with multiple hydrophones, will be applied in the research for target detection, the harbor protection and so on.

This thesis focuses on searching for CpG islands of DNA sequences based on analysis of DNA spectrograms. The first part is theoretical and deals with the significance CpG island, and a description of the algorithms that are used or have been proposed for their search. The theoretical basis were implemented two algorithms based on the analysis of DNA spectrogram. One is based on the assumption that the region CpG islands has a higher content of guanine and cytosine than the region outside the CpG island and the other on the assumption of a higher frequency of occurrence of CG dinucleotides in the CpG island. The algorithms are implemented through MATLAB programming interface. For evaluation usefulness and effectiveness of solutions, results achieved on the selected DNA sequences implemented algorithms are compared with the results achieved by search engines CpG islands, which are freely available on the internet.

We used a Byzantine Music piece performed by a well recognized chanter in order to derive experimentally the mean frequencies of the first five tones (D – A) of the diatonic scale of Byzantine Music. Then we compared the experimentally derived frequencies with frequencies proposed by two theoretical scales, both representative of traditional Byzantine Music chanting. We found that if a scale is performed by a traditional chanter is very close in frequency to the frequencies proposed theoretically. We then determined an allowed frequency deviation from the mean frequencies for each tone. The concept of allowed deviation is not provided by theory. Comparing our results to the notion of pitch discrimination from psychophysics we further established that the frequency differences are minute. The Attraction Effect was tested for a secondary tone (E) and the effect is quantified for the first time. The concept of the Attraction Effect is not explained in theory in terms of frequencies of tones.

O crescimento do volume de dados ocasionado pelo desenvolvimento tecnológico atual, tem sido fortemente evocado como premissa para a utilização de técnicas que auxiliem a exploração, análise e entendimento desses dados. Um conjunto dessas técnicas está compreendido na área de Visualização de Dados, que proporciona maneiras visuais de identificar padrões e tendências, além de extrair características obscuras dos dados. Tais abordagens podem ser aplicadas a qualquer problema que culmine na análise de dados. Um desses problemas é a utilização do som como ferramenta para descrever as características de uma paisagem, área denominada análise de Paisagens Acústicas. Nesta pesquisa de mestrado é apresentada uma abordagem visual para análise de Paisagens Acústicas. Essa abordagem consiste em duas etapas, sendo que na primeira são aplicadas técnicas visuais (Projeção Multidimensional t-SNE) e numéricas (Coeficiente de Silhueta) para avaliar quais conjuntos de características melhor descrevem uma Paisagem Acústica específica. A segunda etapa utiliza técnicas de visualização para analisar diferenças globais e características específicas de paisagens terrestres e aquáticas. Para isso foram utilizados o Mapa de Calor, as Coordenadas Paralelas e a xHiPP, uma extensão da projeção HiPP. A xHiPP busca melhorar a HiPP para alcançar melhor capacidade de análise e flexibilidade de aplicação. Com a aplicação das etapas apresentadas foi possível encontrar evidências de que o Mel-frequency Cepstrum Coefficients formam um conjunto de atributos eficaz para representação e segregação de Paisagens Acústicas. Também foi possível verificar que as técnicas de visualização empregadas na análise são capazes de destacar atributos semelhantes dos áudios, facilitando a análise, permitindo que o usuário dê enfoque às características relevantes do ambiente, no lugar de analisar áudios individuais para extrair informações. / The growth of data volume caused by current technological development has been strongly evoked as a premise for use of techniques that help exploration, analysis, and understanding of data. A subset of these techniques is yielded by the field of Data Visualization, which provides visual manners to identify patterns and trends, as well as the extraction of hidden data features. Such approaches can be applied to problems that aim at data analysis with a strong exploratory component. One such problem is the use of sound as a tool to describe environmental landscapes, named ecological Soundscapes. A visual approach to analysis Soundscapes is presented in this master research. The approach contains two steps, and the first step applies visual (tSNE Multidimensional Projection) and numeric (Silhouette Coefficient) techniques to evaluate attributes groups that better describe a specific Soundscape. The second step employs visual techniques to analysis global differences and specific features of the terrestrial and underwater environment. To achieve these goals, the research used Heatmap, Parallel Coordinates, and xHiPP, an extension of HiPP projection. The xHiPP enhanced HiPP to improve its analytical capabilities and flexibility. The presented steps were able to show evidence of the Mel-frequency Cepstrum Coefficients is an effective attribute collection to represent and segregate Soundscapes. As well, visual techniques employed in the analysis are capable to highlight similar audio features, making exploration easy, allowing users to focus relevant environmental attributes, instead of analyzing individual audios to extraction some information.

O crescimento do volume de dados ocasionado pelo desenvolvimento tecnológico atual, tem sido fortemente evocado como premissa para a utilização de técnicas que auxiliem a exploração, análise e entendimento desses dados. Um conjunto dessas técnicas está compreendido na área de Visualização de Dados, que proporciona maneiras visuais de identificar padrões e tendências, além de extrair características obscuras dos dados. Tais abordagens podem ser aplicadas a qualquer problema que culmine na análise de dados. Um desses problemas é a utilização do som como ferramenta para descrever as características de uma paisagem, área denominada análise de Paisagens Acústicas. Nesta pesquisa de mestrado é apresentada uma abordagem visual para análise de Paisagens Acústicas. Essa abordagem consiste em duas etapas, sendo que na primeira são aplicadas técnicas visuais (Projeção Multidimensional t-SNE) e numéricas (Coeficiente de Silhueta) para avaliar quais conjuntos de características melhor descrevem uma Paisagem Acústica específica. A segunda etapa utiliza técnicas de visualização para analisar diferenças globais e características específicas de paisagens terrestres e aquáticas. Para isso foram utilizados o Mapa de Calor, as Coordenadas Paralelas e a xHiPP, uma extensão da projeção HiPP. A xHiPP busca melhorar a HiPP para alcançar melhor capacidade de análise e flexibilidade de aplicação. Com a aplicação das etapas apresentadas foi possível encontrar evidências de que o Mel-frequency Cepstrum Coefficients formam um conjunto de atributos eficaz para representação e segregação de Paisagens Acústicas. Também foi possível verificar que as técnicas de visualização empregadas na análise são capazes de destacar atributos semelhantes dos áudios, facilitando a análise, permitindo que o usuário dê enfoque às características relevantes do ambiente, no lugar de analisar áudios individuais para extrair informações. / The growth of data volume caused by current technological development has been strongly evoked as a premise for use of techniques that help exploration, analysis, and understanding of data. A subset of these techniques is yielded by the field of Data Visualization, which provides visual manners to identify patterns and trends, as well as the extraction of hidden data features. Such approaches can be applied to problems that aim at data analysis with a strong exploratory component. One such problem is the use of sound as a tool to describe environmental landscapes, named ecological Soundscapes. A visual approach to analysis Soundscapes is presented in this master research. The approach contains two steps, and the first step applies visual (tSNE Multidimensional Projection) and numeric (Silhouette Coefficient) techniques to evaluate attributes groups that better describe a specific Soundscape. The second step employs visual techniques to analysis global differences and specific features of the terrestrial and underwater environment. To achieve these goals, the research used Heatmap, Parallel Coordinates, and xHiPP, an extension of HiPP projection. The xHiPP enhanced HiPP to improve its analytical capabilities and flexibility. The presented steps were able to show evidence of the Mel-frequency Cepstrum Coefficients is an effective attribute collection to represent and segregate Soundscapes. As well, visual techniques employed in the analysis are capable to highlight similar audio features, making exploration easy, allowing users to focus relevant environmental attributes, instead of analyzing individual audios to extraction some information.

This thesis examines the application of the techniques of Fourier spectrogram and wavelet analysis to a low power embedded microprocessor application in a novel railway and rollingstock monitoring system. The safe and cost effective operation of freight railways is limited by the dynamic performance of wagons running on track. A monitoring system has been proposed comprising of low cost wireless sensing devices, dubbed “Health Cards”, to be installed on every wagon in the fleet. When marshalled into a train, the devices would sense accelerations and communicate via radio network to a master system in the locomotive. The integrated system would provide online information for decision support systems. Data throughput was heavily restricted by the network architecture, so significant signal analysis was required at the device level. An electronics engineering team at Central Queensland University developed a prototype Health Card, incorporating a 27MHz microcontroller and four dual axis accelerometers. A sensing arrangement and online analysis algorithms were required to detect and categorise dynamic events while operating within the constraints of the system. Time-frequency analysis reveals the time varying frequency content of signals, making it suitable to detect and characterise transient events. With efficient algorithms such as the Fast Fourier Transform, and Fast Wavelet Transform, time-frequency analysis methods can be implemented on a low power, embedded microcontroller. This thesis examines the application of time-frequency analysis techniques to wagon body acceleration signals, for the purpose of detecting poor dynamic performance of the wagon-track system. The Fourier spectrogram is implemented on the Health Card prototype and demonstrated in the laboratory. The research and algorithms provide a foundation for ongoing development as resources become available for system testing and validation.

In the past decade, the availability of digitally encoded, downloadable music has increased dramatically, pushed mainly by the release of the now famous MP3 compression format (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, 1994). Online sales of music in the US doubled in 2005, according to a recent news article (*), while the number of files exchanged on P2P platforms is much higher, but hard to estimate. The existing and coming informational flood in digital music prompts the need for sophisticated content-based information retrieval. Query-by-Humming is a prototypical technique aimed at locating pieces of music by melody; automatic annotation algorithms seek to enable finer search criteria, such as instruments, genre, or meter. Score transcription systems strive for an abstract, compressed form of a piece of music understandable by composers and musicians. Much research still has to be performed to achieve these goals. This thesis connects essential knowledge about music and human auditory perception with signal processing algorithms to solve the specific problem of pitch estimation. The designed algorithm obtains an estimate of the magnitude spectrum via STFT and models the harmonic structure of each pitch contained in the magnitude spectrum with Gaussian density mixtures, whose parameters are subsequently estimated via an Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. Heuristics for EM initialization are formulated mathematically. The system is implemented in MATLAB, featuring a GUI that provides for visual (spectrogram) and numerical (console) verification of results. The algorithm is tested using an array of data ranging from single to triple superposed instrument recordings. Its advantages and limitations are discussed, and a brief outlook over potential future research is given. (*) "Online and Wireless Music Sales Tripled in 2005"; Associated Press; January 19, 2006

Snores are breath sounds that most people produce during sleep and they are reported to be a risk factor for various sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). Diagnosis of sleep disorders relies on the expertise of the clinician that inspects whole night polysomnography recordings. This inspection is time consuming and uncomfortable for the patient. There are surgical and therapeutic treatments. However, evaluation of the success of these methods also relies on subjective criteria and the expertise of the clinician. Thus, there is a strong need for a tool to analyze the snore sounds automatically, and to produce objective criteria and to assess the success of the applied treatment by comparing these criteria obtained before and after the treatment. In this thesis, we proposed a new algorithm to detect snoring episodes from the sleep sound recordings of the individuals, and created a user friendly interface to process snore recordings and to produce simple objective criteria to evaluate the results. The algorithm classifies sleep sound segments as snores and nonsnores according to their subband energy distributions. It was observed that inter- and intra-individual spectral energy distributions of snore sounds show significant similarities. This observation motivated the representation of the feature vectors in a lower dimensional space which was achieved using principal component analysis. Sleep sounds can be efficiently represented and classified as snore or nonsnore in a two dimensional space. The sound recordings were taken from patients that are suspected of OSAS pathology while they were connected to the polysomnography in G&uuml / lhane Military Medical Academy Sleep Studies Laboratory. The episodes taken from 30 subjects (18 simple snorers and 12 OSA patients) with different apnea/hypopnea indices were classified using the proposed algorithm. The system was tested by using the manual annotations of an ENT specialist as a reference. The system produced high detection rates both in simple snorers and OSA patients.

This diploma thesis deals with centrifugal pump running as a turbine. Basic working principles of a pump are included, both in pump and turbine regime. Experimental data obtained from laboratory test bed are compared with CFD simulation on slightly simplified geometry. Obtained results are then processed using spectrogram. Influence of time step and mesh size on results is also researched.