Lab "Real-time Signal Processing"

 

Basic Information
Lecturers: Gerhard Schmidt and Moritz Boueke
Room: KS2/Geb.G - PC-Labor
Language: English
Target group: Students in electrical engineering and computer engineering
Prerequisites: Skills in C programming language (for the DSS part), basic MATLAB knowledge (for the LNT part), diverse coding skills (for the ICT part)
Registration procedure:

If you want to sign up for this laboratory, you need to register with the following information in the registration form

  • surname, first name,
  • (stu) e-mail address,
  • matriculation number,

Please note, that the registration period starts the 12.03.2025 at 08:00 am and ends the 07.04.2025 at 11:59 pm. All applications before and after this registration period will not be taken into account.

Registration will be possible within the before mentioned time by sending an e-mail with your name and matriculation number to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The registration is binding. A deregistration is possible by sending an e-mail with your name and matriculation number to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. until Sunday, 13.04.2025 at 23:59 am. All later cancellations of registration will be considered as having failed the lab.

Requirements, rules and commitments will be announced at the preliminary meeting (attendance is mandatory).

Attendance at all of the final presentations on the 08.07.2025 at 08:15 am is mandatory as well to pass the lab.
Time:

Preliminary meeting: 15.04.2025 at 08:15, in presence, room: KS2/Geb.G - PC-Labor

Final presentations: 08.07.2025 at 08:15, in presence, room: KS2/Geb.G - PC-Labor
Contents: See the detailed introduction of the topics below.

 

Topics

ICT: Talkative Power Conversion for Smart Grid Communications (1 group of 3 students, Prof. Dr.-Ing. P.A. Hoeher)

Power electronics and communications engineering are commonly considered as two separate fields. Talkative Power Conversion (TPC) is a novel approach that focuses on data encoding during the process of power conversion. Strictly speaking this means that the usually periodic PWM signal of which its dutycycle is depending on the desired output voltage is replaced by an also data dependent switching signal.

In this lab, a simple setup made of microcrontrollers at transmitter and receiver side are used as real-time processors for modulation and demodulation. A demonstration and explanation of a state-of-proof of the TPC principle is the goal. C/C++ for Arduino programming are required.

Further contact: M.Sc. Maximilian Mewis, ICT, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


Last year's topics - subject to change for SS25.


NT.1: Time Series Prediction using Machine Learning (1 group of 3 students, Prof. Dr.-Ing. S. Pachnicke)

One of the most critical points for autonomous vehicles is the handover process from one base station to another, since the vulnerability to additional latencies and even total connection loss is increased during this process. Hence, accurate handover prediction is an important step to ensuring a fast, stable connection and avoiding accidents.

In this project, multiple time-series forecasting models are to be implemented in Python and their capabilities predict handovers on provided datasets are to be evaluated and compared.

Further contact: M.Sc. Alexandr Langolf, NT, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


NT.2: Nonlinearity Mitigation for Optical Signals with Photonic Reservoir Computing (1 group of up to 3 students, Prof. Dr.-Ing. S. Pachnicke)

High launch powers required for optical signal transmissions with higher order modulation formats over long distances introduce signal impairments due to physical effects (e.g. Kerr-Effect) acting on the optical signal in the fiber. These can be partially compensated with photonic reservoir computing, reducing power consumption and latency compared conventional electronic signal processing. The ideal architecture of such reservoir depends on a multitude of different factors, such as the symbol rate, fiber type and application specific constraints (power budget, physical size, ...).

In this project an appropriate spatial reservoir architecture is to be selected and implemented using Python (PhotonTorch) to evaluate its signal equalization performance using different parameters.

Further contact: M.Sc. Sebastian Kühl, NT, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


DSS.1-3: Real-time Audio Processing (2 groups of 3 students, Prof. Dr.-Ing. G. Schmidt)

In this project, students are going to implement a speech enhancement system in the Kiel Real-Time Audio Toolkit (KiRAT). Algorithms within this framework are to be programmed in C language, the graphical user interface is written in C++ using the Qt framework. Thus, it is expected that the participants have some programming skills in C/C++. There will be up to three groups of three students that will create their own speech enhancement systems. Each group will specialize on one of the following algorithmic components:

  • Analysis and synthesis filterbanks,
  • Noise estimation and
  • Noise reduction.

Further contact: M.Sc. Moritz Boueke, DSS, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (in case of preliminary questions, you may also contact M.Sc. Bastian Kaulen, DSS, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

 

Schedule of Talks

Attendance during all presentations as well as active paticipation in the discussions is mandatory to pass the lab.

The schedule can be found below:

5 minutes
08.07.2025 Group Topic Talk duration
08:15 Moritz Boueke Opening
08:20 Group 1 ... X minutes