Ahmed Amer Shahin | Zagazig University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Ahmed Amer Shahin

2017 13th International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC), 2017

Recent years have witnessed massive growth in the popularity of smart portable devices. These dev... more Recent years have witnessed massive growth in the popularity of smart portable devices. These devices are fully powered with a number of network interfaces, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 4G, etc., in order to facilitate connectivity and enable the realization of computing and reachability everywhere and all the time. However, in areas with degraded cellular services and lack of Wi-Fi coverage, these devices do not allow connectivity to the Internet. Such a limitation can be particularly detrimental in application scenarios like search and rescue during and after a disastrous event, since trapped individuals cannot be reached. This paper presents a new framework for overcoming such limitation by introducing a hot-spot that may be accessible over device-to-device (D2D) communication links. Specifically, Wi-Fi direct (WFD) is exploited to form multi-hop peer-to-peer (P2P) routes to the introduced hot-spot. WFD supports the same speed and range of the normal Wi-Fi without the need of any infrastructure. WFD is among the emerging network technologies that are becoming almost standard on all new smart devices. By exploiting nearby devices, which have Internet access, our framework will enable users to publish contents. Our framework is validated through implementation using Android.

Wireless Personal Communications, 2019

To realize the vision of ubiquitous computing and reachability, major technological advances have... more To realize the vision of ubiquitous computing and reachability, major technological advances have been achieved to make smart portable devices both highly capable and affordable. To facilitate connectivity to the Internet, these smart devices are equipped with different network interface cards (4G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi). However, such connectivity may become seriously reduced in places with intermittent network services and/or shortage of Wi-Fi coverage. This limitation may be seriously harmful in rescue scenarios during and after a disastrous event, since blocked users may become difficult to reach. In this paper we present a novel framework to overcome such issue by implementing a hot-spot accessible through device-to-device (D2D) links. In this work, Wi-Fi direct (WFD) is used in order to establish multi-hop P2P paths to the hot-spot. WFD has the same features that carries the standard Wi-Fi in terms of range and speed without using the infrastructure. Wi-Fi direct is largely emerging as a network technology standard enabled in the majority of smartphones. By exploiting nearby devices, which have Internet access, our framework enables users to publish contents. Moreover, our model is validated by using different smartphones and through extensive simulation experiments.

2016 IEEE 12th International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob), 2016

Wi-Fi Direct has been gaining popularity in recent years as a mean for device-to-device communica... more Wi-Fi Direct has been gaining popularity in recent years as a mean for device-to-device communications. Adopting such technology allows portable devices, such as smart phones, to form groups for data sharing without the need for any infrastructure support. Interconnecting multiple groups allows broader coverage and enables the use of Wi-Fi direct in applications such as disaster recovery. However, the current implementation of Wi-Fi direct in popular software environments, such as Android, lacks proper support for multi-group communications. One of the limitations in Android is that all created groups share the same IP subnet. Thus, even if multiple Wi-Fi Direct groups could be interconnected, still bidirectional communications between some devices would not be possible. In this paper, we propose an IP Subnet Negotiation Protocol for Seamless Multi-Group Communications (ISNP) to address such limitation. ISNP is composed of two modules, one at the application level and the other at the OS level that allow Wi-Fi Direct groups to have distinct IP subnets. ISNP can be integrated with other Wi-Fi Direct multi-grouping protocols to allow bidirectional links between groups. In addition, ISNP is flexible, as it allows devices with no modification to its OS to still participate in the protocol, and lightweight, as it does not force the devices to form any type of connection before running ISNP. ISNP is validated through implementation on Android devices. The validation results have confirmed ISNP's efficiency and its ability of avoiding conflicts between IP subnets.

2015 IEEE 40th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), 2015

Wi-Fi Direct (WFD) has become almost a standard for peer-to-peer networking on smart devices. Typ... more Wi-Fi Direct (WFD) has become almost a standard for peer-to-peer networking on smart devices. Typically, WFD allows a user to search for and connect to other devices, which results in creating a group of devices that can exchange data. In certain applications like alert dissemination in disaster areas, it is required to form groups dynamically and to share data across the group boundaries. However, these capabilities are not offered by the current WFD implementations. In this paper, we propose EMC, a novel protocol that allows WFD devices to dynamically cluster themselves into groups and appropriately elect group owners. EMC also allows members of distinct groups to communicate. EMC is validated through implementation on Android devices and through the realization of a chat application.

2015 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2015

In certain situations, there may be an urgent need to disseminate alerts without the support of c... more In certain situations, there may be an urgent need to disseminate alerts without the support of communication infrastructure. For example, when a disaster like an earthquake strikes, it may cause the loss of cellular coverage, Wi-Fi hotspots, etc. In this and similar application scenarios, last mile connectivity will be needed for prompt delivery of alerts. Nearly everyone nowadays carry a smart device that is equipped with at least three communication options that do not need any infrastructure, namely, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Ad-hoc, and Wi-Fi Direct. Despite their ability to work without infrastructure, all these options need a connection setup phase before starting data dissemination. The setup phase incurs unneeded overhead and delay, which diminish their utility in delivering time-critical data. In this paper, we propose a protocol that uses the service discovery mechanism in Wi-Fi Direct to addresses these shortcomings. The protocol embeds the alert data to be disseminated in a Wi-Fi Direct service discovery frame and stores it locally. Other devices interested in receiving alerts send service discovery requests to get updates. The protocol also takes care of forwarding the received alerts to other devices as well. The evaluations showed that the proposed protocol is capable of transmitting timely alerts.

2014 IEEE 25th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communication (PIMRC), 2014

The use of smart portable devices has become very popular in the society nowadays. Many of these ... more The use of smart portable devices has become very popular in the society nowadays. Many of these devices are equipped with sensors that can provide a wealth of information about the surroundings once their readings are aggregated. These capabilities have fueled interest in employing these devices in emerging unconventional applications such as crowdsourcing and vehicular networking, where sensors data is shared for better situational awareness, managing road congestion, coordinating disaster recovery, criminals hunting, etc. Internetworking of collocated devices in these applications enables aggregation of sensor readings and decreasing the demand on the carrier's communication resources, which translate to lower cost, better bandwidth utilization and increased user participation. Wi-Fi Direct is one of the most promising peer-to-peer technologies that can enable such local internetworking of devices. Wi-Fi Direct transceivers are available on almost all new smart devices. However, the software support for Wi-Fi Direct is quite limited. This paper highlights limitations in Android based platforms and presents a framework for supporting formation and management of groups of communicating devices. The proposed framework is validated through the implementation of a chat application over multiple Android based devices.

2017 13th International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC), 2017

Recent years have witnessed massive growth in the popularity of smart portable devices. These dev... more Recent years have witnessed massive growth in the popularity of smart portable devices. These devices are fully powered with a number of network interfaces, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 4G, etc., in order to facilitate connectivity and enable the realization of computing and reachability everywhere and all the time. However, in areas with degraded cellular services and lack of Wi-Fi coverage, these devices do not allow connectivity to the Internet. Such a limitation can be particularly detrimental in application scenarios like search and rescue during and after a disastrous event, since trapped individuals cannot be reached. This paper presents a new framework for overcoming such limitation by introducing a hot-spot that may be accessible over device-to-device (D2D) communication links. Specifically, Wi-Fi direct (WFD) is exploited to form multi-hop peer-to-peer (P2P) routes to the introduced hot-spot. WFD supports the same speed and range of the normal Wi-Fi without the need of any infrastructure. WFD is among the emerging network technologies that are becoming almost standard on all new smart devices. By exploiting nearby devices, which have Internet access, our framework will enable users to publish contents. Our framework is validated through implementation using Android.

Wireless Personal Communications, 2019

To realize the vision of ubiquitous computing and reachability, major technological advances have... more To realize the vision of ubiquitous computing and reachability, major technological advances have been achieved to make smart portable devices both highly capable and affordable. To facilitate connectivity to the Internet, these smart devices are equipped with different network interface cards (4G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi). However, such connectivity may become seriously reduced in places with intermittent network services and/or shortage of Wi-Fi coverage. This limitation may be seriously harmful in rescue scenarios during and after a disastrous event, since blocked users may become difficult to reach. In this paper we present a novel framework to overcome such issue by implementing a hot-spot accessible through device-to-device (D2D) links. In this work, Wi-Fi direct (WFD) is used in order to establish multi-hop P2P paths to the hot-spot. WFD has the same features that carries the standard Wi-Fi in terms of range and speed without using the infrastructure. Wi-Fi direct is largely emerging as a network technology standard enabled in the majority of smartphones. By exploiting nearby devices, which have Internet access, our framework enables users to publish contents. Moreover, our model is validated by using different smartphones and through extensive simulation experiments.

2016 IEEE 12th International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob), 2016

Wi-Fi Direct has been gaining popularity in recent years as a mean for device-to-device communica... more Wi-Fi Direct has been gaining popularity in recent years as a mean for device-to-device communications. Adopting such technology allows portable devices, such as smart phones, to form groups for data sharing without the need for any infrastructure support. Interconnecting multiple groups allows broader coverage and enables the use of Wi-Fi direct in applications such as disaster recovery. However, the current implementation of Wi-Fi direct in popular software environments, such as Android, lacks proper support for multi-group communications. One of the limitations in Android is that all created groups share the same IP subnet. Thus, even if multiple Wi-Fi Direct groups could be interconnected, still bidirectional communications between some devices would not be possible. In this paper, we propose an IP Subnet Negotiation Protocol for Seamless Multi-Group Communications (ISNP) to address such limitation. ISNP is composed of two modules, one at the application level and the other at the OS level that allow Wi-Fi Direct groups to have distinct IP subnets. ISNP can be integrated with other Wi-Fi Direct multi-grouping protocols to allow bidirectional links between groups. In addition, ISNP is flexible, as it allows devices with no modification to its OS to still participate in the protocol, and lightweight, as it does not force the devices to form any type of connection before running ISNP. ISNP is validated through implementation on Android devices. The validation results have confirmed ISNP's efficiency and its ability of avoiding conflicts between IP subnets.

2015 IEEE 40th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), 2015

Wi-Fi Direct (WFD) has become almost a standard for peer-to-peer networking on smart devices. Typ... more Wi-Fi Direct (WFD) has become almost a standard for peer-to-peer networking on smart devices. Typically, WFD allows a user to search for and connect to other devices, which results in creating a group of devices that can exchange data. In certain applications like alert dissemination in disaster areas, it is required to form groups dynamically and to share data across the group boundaries. However, these capabilities are not offered by the current WFD implementations. In this paper, we propose EMC, a novel protocol that allows WFD devices to dynamically cluster themselves into groups and appropriately elect group owners. EMC also allows members of distinct groups to communicate. EMC is validated through implementation on Android devices and through the realization of a chat application.

2015 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2015

In certain situations, there may be an urgent need to disseminate alerts without the support of c... more In certain situations, there may be an urgent need to disseminate alerts without the support of communication infrastructure. For example, when a disaster like an earthquake strikes, it may cause the loss of cellular coverage, Wi-Fi hotspots, etc. In this and similar application scenarios, last mile connectivity will be needed for prompt delivery of alerts. Nearly everyone nowadays carry a smart device that is equipped with at least three communication options that do not need any infrastructure, namely, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Ad-hoc, and Wi-Fi Direct. Despite their ability to work without infrastructure, all these options need a connection setup phase before starting data dissemination. The setup phase incurs unneeded overhead and delay, which diminish their utility in delivering time-critical data. In this paper, we propose a protocol that uses the service discovery mechanism in Wi-Fi Direct to addresses these shortcomings. The protocol embeds the alert data to be disseminated in a Wi-Fi Direct service discovery frame and stores it locally. Other devices interested in receiving alerts send service discovery requests to get updates. The protocol also takes care of forwarding the received alerts to other devices as well. The evaluations showed that the proposed protocol is capable of transmitting timely alerts.

2014 IEEE 25th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communication (PIMRC), 2014

The use of smart portable devices has become very popular in the society nowadays. Many of these ... more The use of smart portable devices has become very popular in the society nowadays. Many of these devices are equipped with sensors that can provide a wealth of information about the surroundings once their readings are aggregated. These capabilities have fueled interest in employing these devices in emerging unconventional applications such as crowdsourcing and vehicular networking, where sensors data is shared for better situational awareness, managing road congestion, coordinating disaster recovery, criminals hunting, etc. Internetworking of collocated devices in these applications enables aggregation of sensor readings and decreasing the demand on the carrier's communication resources, which translate to lower cost, better bandwidth utilization and increased user participation. Wi-Fi Direct is one of the most promising peer-to-peer technologies that can enable such local internetworking of devices. Wi-Fi Direct transceivers are available on almost all new smart devices. However, the software support for Wi-Fi Direct is quite limited. This paper highlights limitations in Android based platforms and presents a framework for supporting formation and management of groups of communicating devices. The proposed framework is validated through the implementation of a chat application over multiple Android based devices.