Signal Processing
The Signal Processing Group’s aim is to undertake innovative research resulting in world leading technology in the area of image and video analysis, coding and communication. The core research areas of the Group can be identified as those of efficient image and video algorithms and architectures, error resilience and transport for multimedia communications and image and video content analysis.
The Group enjoys an international reputation – it was acknowledged as internationally excellent in the 2001 RAE - and represents a core activity in the Centre for Communications Research (CCR). Since then the Group has contributed to 5 books/chapters, more than 50 journal papers and 150 conference proceedings, has filed over 15 patents, 5 of which have been licensed, and has spun out one company.
The Signal Processing Group is highly regarded for combining fundamental research with strong industrial collaboration. It has a grant income totalling approximately £3.5M with its research activities being internationally recognised and financially supported by EPSRC, UK government, Europe and industry. Recent industrial collaborators include Sony, BT, Motorola, LG, Texas Instruments, ProVision Communications, Thales, ST Microelectronics, Granada, AMS, the Metropolitan Police, General Dynamics and QinetiQ.
The Group has a broad portfolio of collaborative work, within the Department (Communication Systems and Networks), outside (Psychology and Mathematics) and internationally (UCSD, Berkeley and Cornell USA, Institute for Infocomm Research Singapore, EPFL Switzerland, UCL Belgium, HHI Germany)
Core research areas of the Signal Processing GroupPeople
The Group currently comprises 6 Faculty Staff, 2 Research Fellows, 5 Research Assistants and 17 PhD students.
- Professor David R. Bull : Head of Group
- Professor Nishan Canagarajah : Faculty of Engineering Research Director
- Dr Jose Nunez Yanez : Senior Lecturer
- Dr David Redmill : Lecturer
- Dr Alin Achim : Lecturer
- Dr Dimitris Agrafiotis : RCUK Academic Fellow
Facilities
A comprehensive video and image processing facility exists at Bristol. The main studio hosts a high performance edit suite (Apple G5/Cinewave/Final Cut Pro), professional HD VTRs and cameras (Sony HDCam), a wide range of Sony, Panasonic and JVC standard definition equipment offering compatibility with most digital and analogue formats, studio quality HD and SD monitors, source switchers, frame grabbers and printers. The facility also contains a multi-HD camera capture facility with Dalsa cameras and Datacube hardware capable of capturing up to 24 HD streams in parallel. It also hosts various items of specialised equipment including surveillance (Panasonic) and infrared (Raytheon) cameras. A second studio comprises a range of equipment to support research into interactivity and immersion. This includes Eye-Link and Tobii eye trackers, a 2m immersive display and a Reachin haptic/3d display. The group's personnel are housed in attractive refurbished desk areas in the new Merchant Venturers building.
The Video and Image Processing Facility
