TITLE: Signal Processing -- An introduction to the fine art of squiggles, tea leaves, and soothsaying

SPEAKER: Dr. Mark Roberson,

TIME: Thursday Mar. 27, 2003 at 4 PM

PLACE: George P. Williams, Jr. Lecture Hall, (Olin 101)

Using sounds and gurgles to communicate with other animals and people and to sense our environment has been a major thrust of animal development for eons. More recently, electronic methods of both recording and analyzing various naturally occurring and people originated signals has become a significant research and development field, driving computer algorithm and architecture design. The analysis of time-varying signals covers a broad range of fields from defense electronics, medicine, and communications. In this seminar, we will encounter a fleeting introduction to frequency transforms, probability, and decibels. Once we are sufficiently dangerous with this primer information, we will look at the problems of signal detection and feature extraction, using as motivating examples several real world signal sources.

Dr. Roberson is a WFU alumnus and a recipient of the Speas award for his undergraduate thesis work.