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Total lightning activity associated with tornadic storms

Published in:
11th Int. Conf. on Atmos. Electr., 7-11 June 1999, pp. 515-518.

Summary

Severe storms often have high flash rates (in excess of one flash per second) and are dominated by intracloud lightning activity. In addition to the extraordinary flash rates, there is a second distinguishing lightning characteristic of severe storms that seems to be important. When the total lightning history is examined, one finds sudden increases in the lightning rate, which we refer to as lightning "jumps", that precede the occurrence of severe weather by ten or more minutes. These jumps are typically 30-60 flashes/min, and are easily identified as anomalously large derivatives in the flash rate. This relationship is associated with updraft intensification and updraft strength is an important factor in storm severity (through the accumulation of condensate aloft and the stretching of vorticity). In several cases, evidence for diminishment of midlevel rotation and the descent of angular momentum from aloft is present prior to the appearance of the surface tornado. Based on our experience with severe and tornadic storms in Central Florida, we believe the total lightning may augment the more traditional use of NEXRAD radars and storm spotters. However, a more rigorous relation of these jumps to storm kinematics is needed if we are to apply total lightning in a decision tree that leads to improved warning lead times and decreased false alarm rates.
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Summary

Severe storms often have high flash rates (in excess of one flash per second) and are dominated by intracloud lightning activity. In addition to the extraordinary flash rates, there is a second distinguishing lightning characteristic of severe storms that seems to be important. When the total lightning history is examined...

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Security implications of adaptive multimedia distribution

Published in:
Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Communications, Multimedia and Wireless, Vol. 3, 6-10 June 1999, pp. 1563-1567.

Summary

We discuss the security implications of different techniques used in adaptive audio and video distribution. Several sources of variability in the network make it necessary for applications to adapt. Ideally, each receiver should receive media quality commensurate with the capacity of the path leading to it from each sender. Several different techniques have been proposed to provide such adaptation. We discuss the implications of each technique for confidentiality, authentication, integrity, and anonymity. By coincidence, the techniques with better performance also have better security properties.
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Summary

We discuss the security implications of different techniques used in adaptive audio and video distribution. Several sources of variability in the network make it necessary for applications to adapt. Ideally, each receiver should receive media quality commensurate with the capacity of the path leading to it from each sender. Several...

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Rotating a weather map

Published in:
Dr. Dobb's J., Vol. 24, No. 6, June 1999, pp. 80-88.

Summary

Introduction: I was recently part of a project developing a system for aircraft pilots to access the national ground weather-radar database while in flight. This weather-radar graphical database is generated from the outputs of the FAA and National Weather Service network of radars covering the continental United States and is updated every five minutes. Each pixel in the database covers a square measuring two kilometers (about one nautical mile) on a side. The content of each data pixel is a measure of the radar reflectivity measured at that location - radar reflectivity is proportional to the water content in the atmosphere (the precipitation rate). This graphical database is available through several commercial vendors - it's what you see displayed on The Weather Channel or during typical TV weather reports. Our system, on the other hand, provides a low-speed digital datalink connection from an FAA ground computer to an avionics computer/display located in the aircraft cockpit.
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Summary

Introduction: I was recently part of a project developing a system for aircraft pilots to access the national ground weather-radar database while in flight. This weather-radar graphical database is generated from the outputs of the FAA and National Weather Service network of radars covering the continental United States and is...

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A photomixer local oscillator for a 630-GHz heterodyne receiver

Published in:
IEEE Microw. Guid. Wave Lett., Vol. 9, No. 6, June 1999, pp. 245-7.

Summary

A photomixer local oscillator (LO) operating at the 630-GHz difference frequency of two laser diodes was successfully demonstrated with a heterodyne detector based on a niobium superconducting tunnel junction. The low-temperature-grown GaAs photomixer generated 0.20 uW in the input spatial mode of the receiver. Using the photmixer LO, the double-sideband noise temperature of the receiver was 331 K - in good agreement with the 323-K noise temperature obtained when a multiplied Gunn oscillator generating 0.25 uW was substituted for the photomixer.
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Summary

A photomixer local oscillator (LO) operating at the 630-GHz difference frequency of two laser diodes was successfully demonstrated with a heterodyne detector based on a niobium superconducting tunnel junction. The low-temperature-grown GaAs photomixer generated 0.20 uW in the input spatial mode of the receiver. Using the photmixer LO, the double-sideband...

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Review of NYC ITWS during the September 7, 1998 severe weather event

Published in:
Project Report ATC-269, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Summary

The New York City Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) prototype became operational for the first time on August 30, 1998. Although this was near the end of the region's convective season, site staff were afforded a unique chance to assess the system's performance during Labor Day weekend on the afternoon of September 7 when a line of severe thunderstorms wreaked havoc over large areas of the Tri-state region. The storm with gusts reported as high as 80 mph, caused fatalities as boats overturned and trees fell on cars. Tornadoes were confirmed over New Jersey and Long Island, with major structural damage occurring in other areas as the result of strong straight-line winds and hail reported as large as 1.75 inches in diameter. Significant airport delays were experienced at the three major New York airports (over 600 flights delayed at least 15 minutes) and several hundred flights were cancelled. This report will assess the performance of ITWS and NEXRAD products during the time severe weather impacted the TRACON area, from about 1700 to 1930 UTC on September 7 (hereafter all times will be given in UTC). It will also discuss the synoptic weather setting and conclude with a section on the operational benefits users derived from ITWS on this day.
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Summary

The New York City Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) prototype became operational for the first time on August 30, 1998. Although this was near the end of the region's convective season, site staff were afforded a unique chance to assess the system's performance during Labor Day weekend on the afternoon...

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Lessons learned designing an alternative CHI for en route air traffic control

Published in:
Controller Centered HMI, 27-29 April 1999.

Summary

MIT Lincoln Laboratory is supporting the FAA-sponsored effort to design an operationally suitable Computer Human Interface (CHI) for the recently upgraded En Route Air Traffic Control Centers. All centers will soon receive new control consoles with state-of-the-art 20 square (2K by 2K resolution) color displays (currently operating in Seattle as of January 1999). The future CHI is being modeled on Eurocontrol's Operational Display and Input Development (ODID) CHI, as requested by active controllers in the US. The ODID-like CHI, with its minimal information display and color coded guidance, provides increased efficiency and productivity through employment of a modern graphical user interface. Lessons learned during the on-going design process, including research of look and feel issues in conjunction with data analysis from controller-in-the-loop testing of a prototype ODID-like CHI will be discussed. The Laboratory plans to model the alternative ODID-like CHI on the best of the European ODID, Denmark Sweden Interface (DSI) and EATCHIP CHI features, while cognizant of the FAA?s DSR capabilities and limitations to support an improved user interface. Human factors issues need resolution to provide a consistent look and feel across the Free Flight Phase 1 products and platforms, the Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS) and the User Request Evaluation Tool (URET). MIT Lincoln Laboratory has built a CHI Requirements Engineering Model (CREM) to support controller-in-the-loop testing of the ODID-like CHI, validate CHI requirements and determine applicable standards for the design of an integrated CHI. The CREM provides a means to assess various CHI alternatives and the capability to iterate options with controller teams to address user concerns. Lessons learned from the ODID-like CHI specification process will also be shared.
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Summary

MIT Lincoln Laboratory is supporting the FAA-sponsored effort to design an operationally suitable Computer Human Interface (CHI) for the recently upgraded En Route Air Traffic Control Centers. All centers will soon receive new control consoles with state-of-the-art 20 square (2K by 2K resolution) color displays (currently operating in Seattle as...

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Automatic speaker clustering from multi-speaker utterances

Published in:
Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, ICASSP, Vol. II, 15-19 March 1999, pp. 817-820.

Summary

Blind clustering of multi-person utterances by speaker is complicated by the fact that each utterance has at least two talkers. In the case of a two-person conversation, one can simply split each conversation into its respective speaker halves, but this introduces error which ultimately hurts clustering. We propose a clustering algorithm which is capable of associating each conversation with two clusters (and therefore two-speakers) obviating the need for splitting. Results are given for two speaker conversations culled from the Switchboard corpus, and comparisons are made to results obtained on single-speaker utterances. We conclude that although the approach is promising, our technique for computing inter-conversation similarities prior to clustering needs improvement.
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Summary

Blind clustering of multi-person utterances by speaker is complicated by the fact that each utterance has at least two talkers. In the case of a two-person conversation, one can simply split each conversation into its respective speaker halves, but this introduces error which ultimately hurts clustering. We propose a clustering...

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Corpora for the evaluation of speaker recognition systems

Published in:
ICASSP 1999, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, 15-19 March 1999.

Summary

Using standard speech corpora for development and evaluation has proven to be very valuable in promoting progress in speech and speaker recognition research. In this paper, we present an overview of current publicly available corpora intended for speaker recognition research and evaluation. We outline the corpora's salient features with respect to their suitability for conducting speaker recognition experiments and evaluations. Links to these corpora, and to new corpora, will appear on the web http://www.apl.jhu.edu/Classes/Notes/Campbell/SpkrRec/. We hope to increase the awareness and use of these standard corpora and corresponding evaluation procedures throughout the speaker recognition community.
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Summary

Using standard speech corpora for development and evaluation has proven to be very valuable in promoting progress in speech and speaker recognition research. In this paper, we present an overview of current publicly available corpora intended for speaker recognition research and evaluation. We outline the corpora's salient features with respect...

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Implications of glottal source for speaker and dialect identification

Published in:
Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, ICASSP, Vol. II, 15-19 March 1999, pp. 813-816.

Summary

In this paper we explore the importance of speaker specific information carried in the glottal source. We time align utterances of two speakers speaking the same sentence from the TIMIT database of American English. We then extract the glottal flow derivative from each speaker and interchange them. Through time alignment and this glottal flow transformation, we can make a speaker of a northern dialect sound more like his southern counterpart. We also time align the utterances of two speakers of Spanish dialects speaking the same sentence and then perform the glottal waveform transformation. Through these processes a Peruvian speaker is made to sound more Cuban-like. From these experiments we conclude that significant speaker and dialect specific information, such as noise, breathiness or aspiration, and vocalization, is carried in the glottal signal.
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Summary

In this paper we explore the importance of speaker specific information carried in the glottal source. We time align utterances of two speakers speaking the same sentence from the TIMIT database of American English. We then extract the glottal flow derivative from each speaker and interchange them. Through time alignment...

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'Perfect reconstruction' time-scaling filterbanks

Published in:
Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, ICASSP, Vol. III, 15-19 March 1999, pp. 945-948.

Summary

A filterbank-based method of time-scale modification is analyzed for elemental signals including clicks, sines, and AM-FM sines. It is shown that with the use of some basic properties of linear systems, as well as FM-to-AM filter transduction, "perfect reconstruction" time-scaling filterbanks can be constructed for these elemental signal classes under certain conditions on the filterbank. Conditions for perfect reconstruction time-scaling are shown analytically for the uniform filterbank case, while empirically for the nonuniform constant-Q (gammatone) case. Extension of perfect reconstruction to multi-component signals is shown to require both filterbank and signal-dependent conditions and indicates the need for a more complete theory of "perfect reconstruction" time-scaling filterbanks.
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Summary

A filterbank-based method of time-scale modification is analyzed for elemental signals including clicks, sines, and AM-FM sines. It is shown that with the use of some basic properties of linear systems, as well as FM-to-AM filter transduction, "perfect reconstruction" time-scaling filterbanks can be constructed for these elemental signal classes under...

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