This paper reviews various bitstream syntax and parser description (BSPD) languages used in MPEG multimedia standards. Traditionally, the bitstream syntax and semantics have been described in human-readable form. Several languages have been developed to describe the bitstream syntax using a computer-readable language and allow the automatic generation of bitstream parsing function from the description. The languages were designed for different objectives and applications but have a range of commonalities in functionality. The aim of this paper is to provide a historical overview of BSPD languages. The background and target application of the BSPD languages are reviewed. In addition, the technical features of each languages, including the linguistic basis (e.g., XML-based) and parser generation method, are discussed and evaluated. In addition, previous studies based on each language are introduced and categorized according to their objectives. Finally, the relevant technical issues that suggest the direction of the future researches are reported.

The increasing demand for monitoring wildfires and their impact on the land surface have prompted studies of burned area extraction and analysis. To differentiate burned and unburned area, the earlier method of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) Burned Area Detection Algorithm was proposed to estimate the change in land surface based on the reflectance energy. The energy, whose wavelengths are sensitive to burning, was selected to calculate the change parameter $Z_{score}$. This method was applied using the MODIS images to produce a MODIS Burned Area product. The approach was to simplify this algorithm to make it compatible with the Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off images. To extract the refined version of burned regions, post-processing was carried out by applying a median filter, dilation morphology algorithm, and finally a gap filling method. The experimental results showed that the detailed burned areas extracted from the proposed method exhibited more spatial details than those of the MODIS Burned products in the large U.S areas. The results also revealed the discontinuous distribution of burned regions in Vietnam forests.

This paper proposes a new approach for enhancing digital images based on red channel information, which has the most analogous characteristics to invisible infrared rays. Specifically, a red channel in RGB space is used to analyze the image contents and improve the visual quality of the input images but it can cause unexpected problems, such as the over-enhancement of reddish input images. To resolve this problem, inter-channel correlations between the color channels were derived, and the weighting parameters for visually pleasant image fusion were estimated. Applying the parameters resulted in significant brightness as well as improvement in the dark and bright regions. Furthermore, simple contrast and color corrections were used to maintain the original contrast level and color tone. The main advantages of the proposed algorithm are 1) it can improve a given image considerably with a simple inter-channel correlation, 2) it can obtain a similar effect of using an extra infrared image, and 3) it is faster than other algorithms compared without artifacts including halo effects. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach could produce better natural images than the existing enhancement algorithms. Therefore, the proposed scheme can be a useful tool for improving the image quality in consumer imaging devices, such as compact cameras.

We present a vaguelette-curvelet decomposition based image deblurring algorithm. We first perform denoising based on the hard-thresholding rule by estimating unknown curvelet coefficients. The proposed algorithm then calculates vaguelette functions by deconvolving the curvelet bases by the point spread function. Vaguelette transform is finally performed to make a clearly restored image. Since the proposed algorithm uses the curvelet transform to sensitively express the edges in all directions, it is possible to restore images with more naturally preserved edges in all directions.

An analysis of the throughput and stability region of random access systems is currently of interest in research and industry. This study evaluated the performance of a multiuser random access channel with a retransmission gain. The channel was composed of a media access control (MAC) determined by the transmission probabilities and a multiuser communication channel characterized by the packet reception probabilities as functions of the number of packet transmissions and the collision status. The analysis began with an illustrative two-user channel, and was extended to a general multiuser channel. For the two-user channel, a sufficient condition was derived, under which the maximum throughput was achieved with a control-free MAC. For the channel with retransmission gain, the maximum steady throughput was obtained in a closed form. The condition under which the random access channel can acquire retransmission gain was also obtained. The stability region of the general random access channel was derived. These results include those of the well-known orthogonal channel, collision channel and slotted Aloha channel with packet reception as a special instance. The analytical and numerical results showed that exploiting the retransmission gain can increase the throughput significantly and expand the stability region of the random access channel. The analytical results predicted the performance in the simulations quite well.

Resource allocation based on quantized feedback plays a critical role in wireless mesh networks with a time division multiple access (TDMA) physical layer. In this study, a resource allocation problem was formulated based on quantized feedback for TDMA wireless mesh networks that minimize the total transmission power. Three steps were taken to solve the optimization problem. In the first step, the codebook of the power, rate and equivalent channel quantization threshold was designed. In the second step, the timeslot allocation criterion was deduced using the primal-dual method. In the third step, a resource allocation scheme was developed based on quantized feedback using the stochastic optimization tool. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme not only reduces the total transmission power, but also has the advantage of quantized feedback.

Key escrow is a default property that is inherent in identity-based cryptography, where a curious private key generator (PKG) can derive a secret value shared by communicating entities in its domain. Therefore, a dishonest PKG can encrypt and decrypt ciphers or can carry out any attack on the communicating parties. Of course, the escrow property is not completely unwanted but is acceptable in other particular applications. On the other hand, in more civil applications, this key escrow property is undesirable and needs to be removed to provide maximum communication privacy. Therefore, this paper presents an escrow-free identity-based key agreement protocol that is also applicable even in a distinct PKG condition that does not use pairings. The proposed protocol has comparable computational and communicational performance to many other protocols with similar security attributes, of which their security is based on costly bilinear pairings. The protocol's notion was inspired by McCullagh et al. and Chen-Kudla, in regard to escrow-free and multi-PKG key agreement ideas. In particular, the scheme captures perfect forward secrecy and key compromise impersonation resilience, which were lacking in McCullagh et al.'s study, as well as all other desirable security attributes, such as known key secrecy, unknown key-share resilience and no-key control. The merit in the proposed protocol is the achievement of all required security requirements with a relatively lower computational overhead than many other protocols because it precludes pairings.

Message replay, malicious Access Point (AP) associations and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are the major threats in Wireless LANs. These threats are possible due to a lack of proper authentication and insecure message communications between wireless devices. Current wireless authentication & key exchange (AKE) schemes and security protocols (WEP, WPA and IEEE 802.11i) are not sufficient against these threats. This paper presents a novel Secure WLAN Authentication Scheme (SWAS). The scheme introduces the delegation concept of mobile authentication in WLANs, and provides mutual authentication to all parties (Wireless Station, Access Point and Authentication Server). The messages involved in the process serve both authentication and key refreshing purposes. The scheme enhances the security by protecting the messages through cryptographic techniques and reduces the DoS impact. The results showed that cryptographic techniques do not result in extra latencies in authentication. The scheme also reduces the communication cost and network overhead.