The theory, algorithms and architectures for processing data and signals and the information they carry.
The theory, algorithms and architectures for processing data and signals and the information they carry – for example, audio, video, image, speech, sonar, radar, medical, sensor, graph signals, big data, network data – for applications across science, technology and media.
This research area includes the theory and techniques concerned with detection, estimation, coding, transmission, enhancement, analysis, representation, recording, reconstruction, transformation and interpretation of signals, data and information.
This strategy reflects growth, which means capacity is now commensurate with this area’s importance, as well as its broad applicability and relevance to many other areas. The area’s focus seems to have narrowed, however, due to an emphasis on defence challenges. There is a need to take opportunities offered by applications in other sectors and developments arising in mathematics, for example.
Digital signal processing is a key underpinning area. As society becomes increasingly connected and reliant on electronic devices everywhere from the home to healthcare, the efficient nature of those connections and safe, secure communication between them assumes growing importance. Signal processing is the medium by which most of this will be carried out.
There is well-coordinated activity in the defence sector resulting from investment in 2013 in the £6 million University Defence Research Collaboration (UDRC). As a result, there has been a focus on priorities for defence-related research in this area, but there is an opportunity to address many other potential application areas, including health, autonomous systems, robotics, manufacturing, aerospace, security, communications, broadcasting and home entertainment, biology and environmental sciences, and the creative industries.
We aim to have stronger connections between researchers in this area and those across a range of application areas. This includes the research and user communities in communications and networks, vision, hearing and imaging, human-computer interaction, music and entertainment, healthcare, manufacturing and environment.
Enabling this will require links between digital signal processing researchers and those working in areas that could contribute to its future development – for example, machine learning, artificial intelligence, optical sensing and mathematics.