Winter Semester 2006/07
Bachelor- and Master Seminars
In preparation for your bachelor- or master thesis we offer bachelor- and master seminars. These seminars do combine the preparation of a special research topic incl. structured literature research and state-of-the-art analysis with learning the documentation and presentation skills needed in every industrial or academic job.
Bachelor- and master seminars are recommended or even mandatory in various study programs and will be dimensioned and credited appropriately. You will have to participate in regular meetings (biweekly during the semester, monthly during lecture free periods) and present your results to your peers.
Prerequisites: Bachelor- and master seminars are directly related to the prospective bachelor- resp. master thesis and therefore do require that you have all necessary requirements for starting the respective thesis. In addition you must have been donated a thesis topic by the telecommunications lab. Matlab experience, hearing or having heard Telecommunications 1 (+ Telecommunications 2 in case of master seminar) is strongly recommended.
Main Seminar: “Attacking a Visual CAPTCHA”
Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) is a program that generates and grades tests which most humans pass, but current computers fail. Graphical instances of the test are often used in the Internet to grant access only to human users (Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, GMail…). Simple variants have already been broken, and in our lab we experiment with more complex, animated CAPTCHAs, for document authentication.
The purpose of the seminar is to create an experimental software environment for attacking visual CAPTCHAs, enabling testing their robustness and further research on the subject. Based on published papers on shape matching, pattern recognition and breaking visual CAPTCHAs, each student develops, tests and reports on one block in the pipeline. The implementation is done in Matlab.
Prerequisites: Bachelor or Vordiplom, Matlab experience, experience or strong interest in image processing, machine vision or pattern recognition.
Telecommunications I / Digital Transmission and Signal Processing
(Nachrichtentechnik I / Digitale Übertragungstechnik & Signalverarbeitung)
Remark: The course can be given in English in case this will be recommended by the participants in the first lesson.
Digital Signal Transmission and Signal Processing refreshes the foundation that you have layed in “Signals and Systems / Signale und Systeme”. We will, however, include the respective basics so that the various facettes of your introductory study period (Bachelor in Computer Science, Vordiplom Computer und Kommunikationstechnik, Elektrotechnik oder Mechatronik) and the potential main study period (Master in Computer Science, Diplom Ingenieur Computer und Kommunikationstechnik oder Mechatronik) will be payed respect to.
As the basic principle the course will give an introduction into the various building blocks that modern telecommunication systems do incorporate. Sources, sinks, source and channel coding, modulation and multiplexing are the major keywords but we will also deal with dedicated pieces like A/D- and D/A-converters and quantizers in a little bit more depth.
The course will refresh the basic transformations (Fourier, Laplace) that give access to system analysis in the frequency domain, it will introduce derived transoformations (z, Hilbert) for the anylysis of discrete systems and modulation schemes and it will briefly introduce algebra on finite fields to systematicly deal with error correction schemes that play an important role in modern communication systems.
Required Education: “Digital Transmission and Signal Processing” is a course during the main study period and by such requires a solid foundation of mathematics (differential and integral calculus) and probability theory. The course will, however, refresh those areas indispensibly necessary for telecommunications and potential intensification courses and by this open this potential field of intensification to everyone of you.