Fadi Aloul | American University of Sharjah (original) (raw)

Papers by Fadi Aloul

Journal of Computer Networks and Communications, 2011

A new technique for multipath detection in wideband mobile radio systems is presented. The propos... more A new technique for multipath detection in wideband mobile radio systems is presented. The proposed scheme is based on an intelligent search algorithm using Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) techniques to search through the uncertainty region of the multipath delays. The SAT-based scheme utilizes the known structure of the transmitted wideband signal, for example, pseudo-random (PN) code, to effectively search through the entire space by eliminating subspaces that do not contain a possible solution. The paper presents a framework for modeling the multipath detection problem as a SAT application. It also provides simulation results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in detecting the multipath components in frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels.

Computers & Electrical Engineering, 2015

Traffic accidents are a fact of life. While accidents are sometimes unavoidable, studies show tha... more Traffic accidents are a fact of life. While accidents are sometimes unavoidable, studies show that the long response time required for emergency responders to arrive is a primary reason behind increased fatalities in serious accidents. One way to reduce this response time is to reduce the amount of time it takes to report an accident. Smartphones are ubiquitous and with network connectivity are perfect devices to immediately inform relevant authorities about the occurrence of an accident. This paper presents the development of a system that uses smartphones to automatically detect and report car accidents in a timely manner. Data is continuously collected from the smartphone's accelerometer and analyzed using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to determine the severity of the accident, reduce false positives and to notify first responders of the accident location and owner's medical information. In addition, accidents can be viewed on the smartphone over the Internet offering instant and reliable access to the information concerning the accident. By implementing this application and adding a notification system, the response time required to notify emergency responders of traffic accidents can reduce the response time and perhaps help in reducing fatalities.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2002

Leakage current promises to be a major contributor to power dissipation in future technologies. B... more Leakage current promises to be a major contributor to power dissipation in future technologies. Bounding the maximum and minimum leakage current poses an important problem. Determining the maximum leakage ensures that the chip meets power dissipation constraints. Applying an input pattern that minimizes leakage allows extending battery life when the circuit is in stand-by mode. Finding such vectors can be expressed as a satisfiability problem. We apply in this paper an incremental SAT solver, PBS [1], to find the minimum or maximum leakage current. The solver is called as a post-process to a random-vector-generation approach. Our results indicate that using a such a generic SAT solver can improve on previously proposed random approaches .

2006 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, 2006

To achieve high reliability in VLSI designs, estimation of the maximum power dissipation during t... more To achieve high reliability in VLSI designs, estimation of the maximum power dissipation during the design cycle is becoming important. In previous work, it was shown that maximizing dissipation is equivalent to maximizing gate output activity, appropriately weighted to account for differing load capacitances. Recent advances in Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) models and algorithms have made it tempting to use satisfiability-based techniques in solving various VLSI design-related problems such as verification and test generation. SAT solvers have also been extended to handle 0-1 integer linear programming (ILP) problems. In this paper, we present an ILPbased solution to compute the maximum weighted activity of combinational circuits. The problem is formulated as an ILP instance and the new SAT-based ILP solvers are used to find an estimate for the power dissipation. For performance comparison, the problem is also solved using generic ILP solvers. The validity of the proposed approach is demonstrated using benchmarks from the MCNC suite.

2009 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, 2009

In mobile radio communication systems using spread spectrum technology, an accurate estimate of t... more In mobile radio communication systems using spread spectrum technology, an accurate estimate of the signal propagation delay is needed in order to recover the transmitted data. This process is usually done using a pseudo noise (PN) code acquisition algorithm to search for the correct propagation delay within a window of possible delays. In this paper, we propose a new approach to solving the PN code acquisition problem using advanced Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) techniques. SAT solvers use intelligent search algorithms that can traverse the search space and efficiently prune parts that contain no solutions. These solvers have recently been used to solve many challenging problems in Engineering and Computer Science. In this paper, we show how to formulate the PN code acquisition problem as a SAT instance and evaluate the use of advanced SAT techniques in solving the problem. Our approach is verified by simulation and presented results indicate that the proposed system achieves a detection probability for the correct delay of almost 100% for all practical cases.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is common progressive lung disease that causes diffi... more Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is common progressive lung disease that causes difficulty in breathing. The paper presents the design and implementation of a user-friendly mobile phone application developed on an Android platform that examines the lung functionality using the phone's built-in sensors. It allows the user to get a sense of whether they have COPD or not from home before visiting a specialized clinic and performing advanced medical tests. The proposed system will make use of the phone's microphone to record exhalations. By means of advanced signal processing techniques, the application will be able to mimic the medical spirometer and determine certain lung measurements that are used to assess the lungs' well-being and diagnose COPD. Furthermore, the application will allow the users to share test results with doctors who can directly assess the disease progression and give advice accordingly. The application was successfully tested among a number of users. Experimental data show promising results which can enhance the quality of life for COPD patients.

Melecon 2010 - 2010 15th IEEE Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference, 2010

State assignment for finite state machines is a critical optimization problem in the synthesis of... more State assignment for finite state machines is a critical optimization problem in the synthesis of sequential circuits. In this paper we address the state assignment problem from a low power perspective. We experiment with Boolean Satisfiability and Integer Linear Programming techniques to solve the assignment problem where the primary goal is the reduction of switching activity during state transitions. We also detect and evaluate the use of symmetries in speeding up the search process. These techniques have been applied to the MCNC benchmark circuits and yielded promising results.

Proceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe - DATE '00, 2000

Interest in propositional satisfiability (SAT) has been on the rise lately, spurred in part by th... more Interest in propositional satisfiability (SAT) has been on the rise lately, spurred in part by the recent availability of powerful solvers that are sufficiently efficient and robust to deal with the large-scale SAT problems that typically arise in electronic design automation application. A frequent question that CAD tool developers and users typically ask is which of these various solvers is "best;" the quick answer is, of course, "it depends." In this paper we attempt to gain some insight into, rather than definitively answer, this question.

2011 1st Middle East Conference on Biomedical Engineering, 2011

Recent developments in off-the-shelf wireless embedded computing platforms and the increasing nee... more Recent developments in off-the-shelf wireless embedded computing platforms and the increasing need for efficient health monitoring systems, fueled by the increasing number of patients, has prompted R&D professionals to explore better health monitoring systems that are both mobile and cheap. This work investigates the feasibility of using the ZigBee embedded technology in health-related monitoring applications. Selected vital signs of patients are acquired using sensor nodes and readings are transmitted wirelessly using devices that utilize the ZigBee communication protocol. A prototype system has been developed and tested with encouraging results.

Wired and wireless networks are being attacked and hacked on continuous basis. One of the critica... more Wired and wireless networks are being attacked and hacked on continuous basis. One of the critical pieces of information the attacker needs to know is the open ports on the victim's machine, thus the attacker does what is called port scanning. Port scanning is considered one of the dangerous attacks that intrusion detection tries to detect. Snort, a famous network intrusion detection system (NIDS), detects a port scanning attack by combining and analyzing various traffic parameters. Because these parameters cannot be easily combined using a mathematical formula, fuzzy logic can be used to combine them; fuzzy logic can also reduce the number of false alarms. This paper presents a novel approach, based on fuzzy logic, to detect port scanning attacks. A fuzzy logic controller is designed and integrated with Snort in order to enhance the functionality of port scanning detection. Experiments are carried out in both wired and wireless networks. The results show that applying fuzzy logic adds to the accuracy of determining bad traffic. Moreover, it gives a level of degree for each type of port scanning attack.

Intrusion detection is a mechanism used to detect various attacks on a wired or wireless network.... more Intrusion detection is a mechanism used to detect various attacks on a wired or wireless network. Port scanning is one of the dangerous attacks that intrusion detection tries to detect. Snort, a famous network intrusion detection system (NIDS), detects a port scanning attack by combining and analyzing various traffic parameters. Because these parameters cannot be easily combined using a mathematical formula, fuzzy logic can be used to combine them; fuzzy logic can also reduce the number of false alarms. This paper presents a novel approach, based on fuzzy logic, to detect port scanning attacks. A fuzzy logic controller is designed and integrated with Snort in order to enhance the functionality of port scanning detection. Experiments are carried out in both wired and wireless networks. The results show that applying fuzzy logic adds to the accuracy of determining bad traffic. Moreover, it gives a level of degree for each type of port scanning attack.

2012 IEEE 14th International Conference on e-Health Networking, Applications and Services (Healthcom), 2012

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a sleeping disorder characterized by the repetitive reduction of... more Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a sleeping disorder characterized by the repetitive reduction of airflow during sleep. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of a user-friendly mobile application developed on multiple platforms (Windows and Android) to monitor and detect symptoms of sleep apnea using the smart phone's built-in sensors. The purpose of the application, Sleep Apnea Monitor (SAM), is to allow users to get a sense of whether or not they are likely to have sleep apnea, before continuing with more expensive and advanced sleep tests. In addition, SAM provides doctors and sleep specialists with remote access to patients' records and allows them to confirm their initial diagnosis. The parameters measured by this application are breathing patterns and movement patterns, which are recorded respectively using the built-in microphone and accelerometer. The recorded data is sent to a server for analysis in order to diagnose patients and maintain geographical studies of areas with sleep apnea patterns. The application is successfully tested among a number of users in the UAE. The system diagnoses and reports the level of the user's sleep apnea. In addition, doctors can remotely monitor users through the website, which is interfaced with Google Maps to keep track of user locations, and keep track of their analysed records.

Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 2014

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a serious sleep disorder which is characterized by frequent obst... more Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a serious sleep disorder which is characterized by frequent obstruction of the upper airway, often resulting in oxygen desaturation. The serious negative impact of OSA on human health makes monitoring and diagnosing it a necessity. Currently, polysomnography is considered the gold standard for diagnosing OSA, which requires an expensive attended overnight stay at a hospital with considerable wiring between the human body and the system. In this paper, we implement a reliable, comfortable, inexpensive, and easily available portable device that allows users to apply the OSA test at home without the need for attended overnight tests. The design takes advantage of a smatrphone's built-in sensors, pervasiveness, computational capabilities, and user-friendly interface to screen OSA. We use three main sensors to extract physiological signals from patients which are (1) an oximeter to measure the oxygen level, (2) a microphone to record the respiratory effort, and (3) an accelerometer to detect the body's movement. Finally, we examine our system's ability to screen the disease as compared to the gold standard by testing it on 15 samples. The results showed that 100% of patients were correctly identified as having the disease, and 85.7% of patients were correctly identified as not having the disease. These preliminary results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed system when compared to the gold standard and emphasize the important role of smartphones in healthcare.

13th IEEE International Conference on BioInformatics and BioEngineering, 2013

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a common sleep disorder which is characterized by recurrent bloc... more Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a common sleep disorder which is characterized by recurrent blockage of the upper airway, often resulting in oxygen desaturation. Attended overnight polysomnography (PSG) has been recommended as the golden standard for the diagnostic of OSA at hospitals, which requires an expensive attended overnight stay at a hospital with considerable wiring between the PSG device and the human body. In this work, we implement a reliable, comfortable, inexpensive, and easily available portable device that allows users to apply the OSA test at home without the need for attended overnight tests. The design takes advantage of a smartphone's built-in sensors, pervasiveness, computational capabilities, and userfriendly interface to screen OSA. We extract three main physiological signals to diagnose OSA which are (1) oxygen saturation using an external oximeter, (2) respiratory effort using the smartphone's built-in microphone, and (3) body movement using the smartphone's built-in accelerometer. The signals are analyzed on the smartphone to screen the OSA. Finally, we examine our system's ability to screen the disease as compared to the golden standard by testing it on 15 subjects. Results show that 100% of the sick subjects were correctly classified as having OSA, and 85.7% of the healthy subjects were correctly classified as not having OSA. These preliminary results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system when compared to the golden standard and emphasize the important role of smartphones in healthcare.

2008 3rd International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies: From Theory to Applications, 2008

This paper describes the design of an RFID Kids Tracking System. It is designed to track a moving... more This paper describes the design of an RFID Kids Tracking System. It is designed to track a moving child in a wide area, such as a park or mall, using RFID technology. The proposed system has hardware and software components. The hardware architecture consists of an RFID active tag, RFID tag reader, web server and database server. The web server and database server are located in the master station. The tag readers are distributed around the open area, e.g. park. The tags are programmed with kid's profiles and are worn by the kids. Communication between the tag reader and the web server is done via wireless LANs. The software architecture consists of a communication driver that handles all communication functions done at the master station, an Application Programming Interface (API) that handles and analyzes the data, a friendly GUI and a database that saves all readings and client information.

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia - MoMM '09, 2009

The wide spread of mobiles as handheld devices would naturally lead to various innovative applica... more The wide spread of mobiles as handheld devices would naturally lead to various innovative applications that makes use of their ever increasing presence in our daily life. One such application is location-tracking in indoor environments. In this paper we discuss the implementation of a simple and cost effective system that assists users in tracking colleagues and friends within a campus environment. The system uses the information built in a typical mobile such as its IMEI and IMSI and the various WiFi access points on campuses to pin point a user's position. A mobile application program communicates with a web server and a GSM modem to provide users with real time data related to a person's movements and location.

2006 3rd International Conference on Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 2006

Today, most routing problems are solved using Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. Many efficient ... more Today, most routing problems are solved using Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. Many efficient implementations of Dijkstra's algorithm exist and can handle large networks in short runtimes. Despite these advances, it is difficult to incorporate userspecific conditions on the solution when using Dijkstra's algorithm. Such conditions can include forcing the path to go through a specific node, forcing the path to avoid a specific node, using any combination of inclusion/exclusion of nodes in the path, etc. In this paper, we propose a new approach to solving the shortest path problem using advanced Boolean satisfiability (SAT) techniques. SAT has been heavily researched in the last few years. Significant advances have been proposed and has lead to the development of powerful SAT solvers that can handle very large problems. SAT solvers use intelligent search algorithms that can traverse the search space and efficiently prune parts that contain no solutions. These solvers have recently been used to solve many problems in Engineering and Computer Science. In this paper, we show how to formulate the shortest path problem as a SAT problem. Our approach is verified on various network topologies. The results are promising and indicate that using the proposed approach can improve on previous techniques.

International Journal of Smart Grid and Clean Energy, 2012

The traditional electrical power grid is currently evolving into the smart grid. Smart grid integ... more The traditional electrical power grid is currently evolving into the smart grid. Smart grid integrates the traditional electrical power grid with information and communication technologies (ICT). Such integration empowers the electrical utilities providers and consumers, improves the efficiency and the availability of the power system while constantly monitoring, controlling and managing the demands of customers. A smart grid is a huge complex network composed of millions of devices and entities connected with each other. Such a massive network comes with many security concerns and vulnerabilities. In this paper, we survey the latest on smart grid security. We highlight the complexity of the smart grid network and discuss the vulnerabilities specific to this huge heterogeneous network. We discuss then the challenges that exist in securing the smart grid network and how the current security solutions applied for IT networks are not sufficient to secure smart grid networks. We conclude by over viewing the current and needed security solutions for the smart gird.