Nasir Ahmed (engineer)
Nasir Ahmed is an Indian-American electrical engineer and computer scientist. He is Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of New Mexico. He is best known for inventing the discrete cosine transform in the early 1970s. The DCT is the most widely used data compression transformation, the basis for most digital media standards and commonly used in digital signal processing. He also described the discrete sine transform, which is related to the DCT.
Discrete cosine transform (DCT)
The discrete cosine transform is a lossy compression algorithm that was first conceived by Ahmed while working at the Kansas State University, and he proposed the technique to the National Science Foundation in 1972. He originally intended the DCT for image compression. Ahmed developed a working DCT algorithm with his PhD student T. Natarajan and friend K. R. Rao in 1973, and they presented their results in a January 1974 paper. It described what is now called the type-II DCT, as well as the type-III inverse DCT.Ahmed was the leading author of the benchmark publication, Discrete Cosine Transform, which has been cited as a fundamental development in many works since its publication. The basic research work and events that led to the development of the DCT were summarized in a later publication by N. Ahmed, "How I came up with the Discrete Cosine Transform".
The DCT is widely used for digital image compression. It is a core component of the 1992 JPEG image compression technology developed by the JPEG Experts Group working group and standardized jointly by the ITU, ISO and IEC. A tutorial discussion of how it is used to achieve digital video compression in various international standards defined by ITU and MPEG is available in a paper by K. R. Rao and J. J. Hwang which was published in 1996, and an overview was presented in two 2006 publications by Yao Wang. The image and video compression properties of the DCT resulted in its being an integral component of the following widely used international standard technologies:
| Standard | Technologies |
| JPEG | Storage and transmission of photographic images on the World Wide Web ; and widely used in digital cameras and other photographic image capture devices. |
| MPEG-1 Video | Video distribution on CD or via the World Wide Web. |
| MPEG-2 Video | Storage and handling of digital images in broadcast applications: digital TV, HDTV, cable, satellite, high speed internet; video distribution on DVD. |
| H.261 | First of a family of video coding standards. Used primarily in older video conferencing and video telephone products. |
| H.263 | Video telephony over Public Switched Telephone Network |
The form of DCT used in signal compression applications is sometimes referred to as "DCT-2" in the context of a family of discrete cosine transforms, or as "DCT-II".
More recent standards have used integer-based transforms that have similar properties to the DCT but are explicitly based on integer processing rather than being defined by trigonometric functions. As a result of these transforms having similar symmetry properties to the DCT and being, to some degree, approximations of the DCT, they have sometimes been called "integer DCT" transforms. Such transforms are used for video compression in the following technologies pertaining to more recent standards:
| Standard | Technologies |
| VC-1 | Windows media, Blu-ray Discs. |
| H.264/MPEG-4 AVC | The most commonly used format for recording, compression and distribution of high definition video; streaming internet video; Blu-ray Discs; HDTV broadcasts. |
| HEVC | The emerging successor to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard, having substantially improved compression capability. |
| WebP Images | A graphic format that support the lossy compression of digital images. Developed by Google. |
| WebM Video | A multimedia open source format developed by Google intended to be used with HTML5. |
The "integer DCT" design is conceptually similar to the conventional DCT; however, it is simplified and made to provide exactly specified decoding.
The DCT has been widely cited in patents that have been awarded since 1976, some examples of which are as follows:
- U.S. Patents Quick Search: Title: DCT. Description/Specification: Video ;
- U. S. Patent Quick Search: Title: Image. Abstract: DCT ;
- U. S Patent Quick Search: Title: Video. Abstract: DCT ;
- U.S. Patent Quick Search: Title: Image. Description/Specification: DCT ;
- U.S. Patent Quick Search: Title: Video. Description/Speification: DCT .
The discrete sine transform is derived from the DCT, by replacing the Neumann condition at x=0 with a Dirichlet condition. The DST was described in the 1974 DCT paper by Ahmed, Natarajan and Rao.
Ahmed later was involved in the development a DCT lossless compression algorithm with Giridhar Mandyam and Neeraj Magotra at the University of New Mexico in 1995. This allows the DCT technique to be used for lossless compression of images. It is a modification of the original DCT algorithm, and incorporates elements of inverse DCT and delta modulation. It is a more effective lossless compression algorithm than entropy coding.
Background
- Alumnus of the Bishop Cotton Boys' School; received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, Bangalore, India in 1961;
- Received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of New Mexico in 1963 and 1966, respectively. His doctoral dissertation adviser was Dr. Shlomo Karni;
- Principal Research Engineer, Honeywell, St. Paul, MN from 1966–68;
- Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Kansas State University, 1968–83;
- 1983-2001: University of New Mexico—Presidential Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 1983–89; Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 1989–94; Dean of Engineering, 1994–96; Associate Provost for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies, 1996–2001;
- Consultant, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, 1976–90.
- Married to Esther Pariente-Ahmed, Ph.D., University of New Mexico, 1994. Son, Michael Pariente, Esq. - Las Vegas Criminal Defense Attorney.
Books
- Leading author of Orthogonal Transforms for Digital Signal Processing, Springer-Verlag, 1975, with K.R. Rao; translated into Russian and Chinese . It is the first text book that included the DCT, and one of the first to present a unified approach to using sinusoidal and non-sinusoidal orthogonal transforms for signal processing. To quote one reviewer, "the authors have treaded where others have feared to venture. In doing so, they have developed a useful book as a first effort in the exciting area of digital signal processing and general orthogonal transforms;" for details, see H. Andrews .
. . A softcover reprint of this first edition is now available—e.g., see , , and .
- Leading author of Discrete-Time Signals and Systems, Reston Publishing Company, Inc., Reston, Virginia, 1983, with T. Natarajan; translated into Japanese . .