Ranjan Gangopadhyay

A novel approach for phonocardiographic signals processing to make possible fetal heart rate evaluations

Abstract In this paper, a non-invasive, portable and inexpensive antenatal care system is developed using fetal phonocardiography. The fPCG technique has the potential to provide low-cost and long-term diagnostics to the under-served population. The fPCG signal contains valuable diagnostic information regarding fetal health during antenatal period. The fPCG signals are acquired from the maternal abdominal surface using a wireless data acquisition and recording system. The diagnostic parameters e.g., baseline, variability, acceleration and deceleration of the fetal heart rate are derived from the fPCG signal. A model based on adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system is developed for the evaluation of fetal health status. To study the performance of the developed system, experiments were carried out with real fPCG signals under the supervision of medical experts. Its performance is found to be in close proximity with the widely accepted Doppler ultrasound based fetal monitor results. The overall performance shows that the developed system has a long-term monitoring capability with very high performance to cost ratio. The system can be used as first screening tool by the medical practitioners.

Wavelet based spectrum sensing in a multipath Rayleigh fading Channel

Cognitive Radio (CR) is a new promise to settle spectral congestion problem in the face of increasing bandwidth demand for many new and upcoming mobile and internet applications. Robust, energy efficient and computationally efficient spectrum sensing for detecting white spaces in a wideband radio spectrum still remains a challenge. In this paper, we have adopted the wavelet based approach for edge detection and power spectral density (PSD) estimation for spectrum sensing and have analysed its performance in both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channel based on the derived receiver operating characteristic (ROC). The sensitivity of PSD to Doppler frequency shift in the wireless channel is also quantified through simulation results.

Interval type-2 fuzzy logic based antenatal care system using phonocardiography

The assessment of fetal wellbeing depends heavily on variations in fetal heart rate (FHR) patterns. The variations in FHR patterns are very complex in nature thus its reliable interpretation is very difficult and often leads to erroneous diagnosis. We propose a new method for evaluation of fetal health status based on interval type-2 fuzzy logic through fetal phonocardiography (fPCG). Type-2 fuzzy logic is a powerful tool in handling uncertainties due to extraneous variations in FHR patterns through its increased fuzziness of relations. Four FHR parameters are extracted from each fPCG signal for diagnostic decision making. The membership functions of these four inputs and one output are chosen as a range of values so as to represent the level of uncertainty. The fuzzy rules are constructed based on standard clinical guidelines on FHR parameters. Experimental clinical tests have shown very good performance of the developed system in comparison with the FHR trace simultaneously recorded through standard fetal monitor. Statistical evaluation of the developed system shows 92% accuracy. With the proposed method we hope that, long-term and continuous antenatal care will become easy, cost effective, reliable and efficient.

Compensation of chromatic dispersion-induced power fading using optimised chirped fibre Bragg grating for millimetre-wave radio-over-fibre system

Compensation of fibre dispersion-induced power fading in an externally modulated sub- carrier multiplexed radio-over-fibre transmission link using the chirped fibre Bragg grating (CFBG) has been investigated. The results show that periodic power fading caused by fibre chromatic dispersion is significantly reduced and the optimum transmission distance can be increased by proper design of grating parameters and optimum selection of apodisation profile. The investigation also reveals that carrier-to-noise ratio and bit-error rate of 156 Mbps DPSK signal are also significantly improved using the CFBG with asymmetric apodisation profile as the dispersion compensator.

TIME-FREQUENCY CHARACTERIZATION OF FETAL PHONOCARDIOGRAPHIC SIGNALS USING WAVELET SCALOGRAM

Fetal phonocardiography is a simple and noninvasive diagnostic technique for surveillance of fetal well-being. The fetal phonocardiographic (fPCG) signals carry valuable information about the anatomical and physiological states of the fetal heart. This article is concerned with a study of continuous wavelet transform (CWT)-based scalogram in analyzing the fPCG signals. The scalogram has both spatial and frequency resolution powers, whereas traditional spectral estimation methods only have the frequency resolution ability. The fPCG signals are acquired by a specially developed data recording system. Segmentation of these signals into fundamental components of fetal heart sound (S1 & S2) is carried out through envelope detection and thresholding techniques. CWT-based scalogram is used for time-frequency characterization of the segmented fPCG signals. It has been shown that the wavelet scalogram provides enough features of the fPCG signals that will help to obtain qualitative and quantitative measurements of the time-frequency characteristics of the fPCG signals and consequently, assist in diagnosis. The proposed method for time-frequency analysis (TFA) and the associated pre-processing have been shown to be suitable for the characterization of fPCG signals, yielding relatively good and robust results in the experimental evaluation.

Foetal phonocardiographic signal denoising based on non-negative matrix factorization

Foetal phonocardiography (fPCG) is a non-invasive, cost-effective and simple technique for antenatal care. The fPCG signals contain vital information of diagnostic importance regarding the foetal health. However, the fPCG signal is usually contaminated by various noises and thus requires robust signal processing to denoise the signal. The main aim of this paper is to develop a methodology for removal of unwanted noise from the fPCG signal. The proposed methodology utilizes the non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) algorithm. The developed methodology is tested on both simulated and real-time fPCG signals. The performance of the developed methodology has been evaluated in terms of the gain in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) achieved through the process of denoising. In particular, using the NMF algorithm, a substantial improvement in SNR of the fPCG signals in the range of 12–30 dB has been achieved, providing a high quality assessment of foetal well-being.

Optical bistability in a nonlinear resonator with saturable losses and intensity-dependent refractive index

We present numerical results relative to a bistable optical device comprised of an asymmetric Fabry-Perot cavity embedding a nonlinear optical medium. Both the real and imaginary part of the third order nonlinear susceptibility are considered in our calculations. Optimized device operation, expressed in terms of the contrast ratio between the two stable states, is then discussed as a function of the different cavity parameters. The presented method can be a useful tool for designing practical devices with application in the field of all-optical switching, optical regeneration and optical signal processing.

Reach Extension of a DPSK Optical Link Using an Optical Filter Demodulator and MLSE Receiver

We have proposed a novel scheme based on chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG) as a narrowband optical filter demodulator and a maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) receiver to attain an enhanced unrepeatered reach in a nonreturn-to-zero differential phase-shift-keying (NRZ-DPSK) transmission link. An extended reach up to 500 km with only 2-dB optical signal-to-noise ratio penalty is found feasible for a 10.7-Gb/s NRZ-DPSK link with the CFBG-MLSE combination.

Operational Equivalence of Self-Switching in MZI and Nonlinear Polarization Switches Based on SOAs

Numerical simulations and experiments demonstrate the equivalence of two self-switches based on semiconductor optical amplifiers, namely the nonlinear polarization switch and the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. This equivalence is highlighted by introducing a one-to-one functional similarity among the switch components. By means of a detailed study on gain and phase difference variations in both switches, we introduce a method to determine the configurations in which the switches exhibit an equivalent power transfer function. Their operational equivalence is experimentally confirmed.

Analysis of an optical packet switch with partially shared buffer and wavelength conversion

An analytical approach based on a reduced Markov chain (RMC) model of an optical packet switch with partially shared output buffer has been presented and a combined scheme for the contention resolution in optical packet switches has been proposed. The proposed scheme takes the advantage of output buffering, shared buffering and wavelength conversion to enhance the switch performance. The performance evaluation of the switch architecture based on RMC modelling has been validated through extensive simulation. Moreover, for a self-similar input traffic, the switch performance has been shown to achieve further improvement if a traffic shaping mechanism is incorporated at the input end of the switch architecture.