Research Interests of Nariman Farvardin

My general research interests are in the area of information theory and coding, signal compression with applications to speech, image and video coding and transmission, especially over wireless channels, speech and speaker recognition and digital communications.

My current research activities are heavily focused on signal compression and coding for wireless communication networks. This includes the study of efficient, low-complexity and scalable compression systems. Here, scalability refers to scalability in resolution (both temporal and spatial) and scalability in encoding rate. Scalability in resolution is an important feature in multicasting applications where different receivers have different resolutions, whereas scalability in encoding rate provides the capability for progressive transmission -- a desirable property for telebrowsing. Another component of this research concentrates on the development of techniques for robust transmission of compressed signals over noisy communication channels, such as those arising in wireless networks. This includes the study of power control policies, channel-adaptive decoding schemes, combined source-channel coding schemes, unequal error protection, and dynamic rate allocation mechanisms. A goal of this research is the establishment of a real-time, multimedia, signal transmission platform for communication over wireless communication networks.

Another related activity is the development of low-rate, low-complexity and multi-resolution video compression systems for real-time, desk-top video teleconferencing over a wireline local area network.