Pasquale Ferrara

Dr. Pasquale Ferrara

European Commission - Joint Research Center (Ispra)

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

12Years (2015-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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6 March 2024 in IET Radar, Sonar & Navigation
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
FMFederica Massimi
Federica Massimi
PFPasquale Ferrara
Pasquale Ferrara
RPRoberto Petrucci
Roberto Petrucci
Francesco BenedettoFrancesco Benedetto
Francesco Benedetto
The increasing number of space objects (SO), debris, and constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit poses a significant threat to the sustainability and safety of space operations, which must be carefully and efficiently addressed to avoid mutual collisions. The space situational awareness is currently addressed by an ensemble of radar and radio‐telescopes that detect and track SO. However, a large part of space debris is composed of very small and tiny metallic objects, very difficult to detect. The authors demonstrate the benefits of using deep learning (DL) architectures for small space object detection by radar observations. TIRA radio telescope has been simulated to generate range‐Doppler maps, then used as inputs for object detection exploiting You‐Only‐Look‐Once (YOLO) frameworks. The results demonstrate that the object detection by using YOLO algorithms outperform conventional target detection approaches, thus indicating the potential benefits of using DL techniques for space surveillance applications.

26 October 2015 in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
AOAlberto A. de Oliveira
Alberto A. de Oliveira
PFPasquale Ferrara
Pasquale Ferrara
ARAlessia De Rosa
Alessia De Rosa
Alessandro PivaAlessandro Piva
Alessandro Piva
MBMauro Barni
Mauro Barni
ARAnderson Rocha
Anderson Rocha
Recently, several studies have been concerned with modeling the parenthood relationships between near duplicates in a set of images. Two images share a parenthood relationship if one is obtained by applying transformations to the other. However, this is not the only form of parenting that can exist among images. An image might be a composition created through the combination of the semantic information existent in two or more source images, establishing a relationship between the sources and the composite. The problem of identifying these relations in a set containing near-duplicate subsets of source and composition images is referred to as multiple parenting phylogeny. Thus far, researchers tackled this problem with a three-step solution: 1) separation of near-duplicate groups; 2) classification of the relations between the groups; and 3) identification of the images used to create the original composition. In this work, we extend upon this framework by introducing key improvements, such as better identification of when two images share content, and improved ways to compare this content. In addition, we also introduce a new realistic professionally created data set of compositions involving multiple parenting relationships. The method we present in this paper is properly evaluated through quantitative metrics, established for assessing the accuracy in finding multiple parenting relationships. Finally, we discuss some particularities of the framework, such as the importance of an accurate reconstruction of phylogenies and the method's behavior when dealing with more complex compositions.

23 December 2022 in Sensors
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Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
FMFederica Massimi
Federica Massimi
PFPasquale Ferrara
Pasquale Ferrara
Francesco BenedettoFrancesco Benedetto
Francesco Benedetto
Artificial Intelligence of things (AIoT) is the combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure. AI deals with the devices’ learning process to acquire knowledge from data and experience, while IoT concerns devices interacting with each other using the Internet. AIoT has been proven to be a very effective paradigm for several existing applications as well as for new areas, especially in the field of satellite communication systems with mega-constellations. When AIoT meets space communications efficiently, we have interesting uses of AI for Satellite IoT (SIoT). In fact, the number of space debris is continuously increasing as well as the risk of space collisions, and this poses a significant threat to the sustainability and safety of space operations that must be carefully and efficiently addressed to avoid critical damage to the SIoT networks. This paper aims to provide a systematic survey of the state of the art, challenges, and perspectives on the use of deep learning methods for space situational awareness (SSA) object detection and classification. The contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows: (i) we outline using AI algorithms, and in particular, deep learning (DL) methods, the possibility of identifying the nature/type of spatial objects by processing signals from radars; (ii) we present a comprehensive taxonomy of DL-based methods applied to SSA object detection and classification, as well as their characteristics, and implementation issues.

25 February 2022 in Journal of Imaging
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Journal Article
Open access
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PFPasquale Ferrara
Pasquale Ferrara
Massimo IulianiMassimo Iuliani
Massimo Iuliani
Alessandro PivaAlessandro Piva
Alessandro Piva
Photo Response Non-Uniformity (PRNU) is reputed the most successful trace to identify the source of a digital video. However, its effectiveness is mainly limited by compression and the effect of recently introduced electronic image stabilization on several devices. In the last decade, several approaches were proposed to overcome both these issues, mainly by selecting those video frames which are considered more informative. However, the two problems were always treated separately, and the combined effect of compression and digital stabilization was never considered. This separated analysis makes it hard to understand if achieved conclusions still stand for digitally stabilized videos and if those choices represent a general optimum strategy to perform video source attribution. In this paper, we explore whether an optimum strategy exists in selecting frames based on their type and their positions within the groups of pictures. We, therefore, systematically analyze the PRNU contribute provided by all frames belonging to either digitally stabilized or not stabilized videos. Results on the VISION dataset come up with some insights into optimizing video source attribution in different use cases.

15 July 2021 in Journal of Imaging
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Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
PFPasquale Ferrara
Pasquale Ferrara
RHRudolf Haraksim
Rudolf Haraksim
LBLaurent Beslay
Laurent Beslay
Performance evaluation of source camera attribution methods typically stop at the level of analysis of hard to interpret similarity scores. Standard analytic tools include Detection Error Trade-off or Receiver Operating Characteristic curves, or other scalar performance metrics, such as Equal Error Rate or error rates at a specific decision threshold. However, the main drawback of similarity scores is their lack of probabilistic interpretation and thereby their lack of usability in forensic investigation, when assisting the trier of fact to make more sound and more informed decisions. The main objective of this work is to demonstrate a transition from the similarity scores to likelihood ratios in the scope of digital evidence evaluation, which not only have probabilistic meaning, but can be immediately incorporated into the forensic casework and combined with the rest of the case-related forensic. Likelihood ratios are calculated from the Photo Response Non-Uniformity source attribution similarity scores. The experiments conducted aim to compare different strategies applied to both digital images and videos, by considering their respective peculiarities. The results are presented in a format compatible with the guideline for validation of forensic likelihood ratio methods.

7 February 2021
Verified
Book Chapter
Closed access
PDF file
PFPasquale Ferrara
Pasquale Ferrara
GDGerard Draper-Gil
Gerard Draper-Gil
ISIgnacio Aguilar Sánchez
Ignacio Aguilar Sánchez
HJHenrik Junklewitz
Henrik Junklewitz
LBLaurent Beslay
Laurent Beslay