2007 2008 research profile - nust school of electrical
TRANSCRIPT
School of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science
20072008
Research Profile NUST SEECS places a high premium on quality research as a gateway to new horizons of scientific knowledge and discovery. For this purpose, different research groups have been
formed which notably include the ones detailed in this book.
A centre of excellence for quality education and research
NUST SEECS RESEARCH BOOKLET 200708 Table of Contents: 1. SEECS Distributed & Grid Computing Group (Page 2 )
2. Muhaqiq‐‐ Centre for Measurement and Analysis of the Global Grid and Internet
End‐to‐End Performance –MAGGIE (Page 9 )
3. SEECS Open Mobile Squad – SOMS (Page 15 )
4. Reconfigurable Computing Research Group (Page 21 )
5. Raw Network Data Collection and Classification (Page 22 )
6. NUST‐SEECS Networks Research Group (Page 23 )
7. Nanotechnology Research Group (Page 33 )
8. Wireless, Internet & Security Research –WISNET (Page 36 )
9. Next Generation Communication Technologies Research Group (Page 52 )
10. Center for High Performance Scientific Computing (Page 54 )
11. Group for Research in ASIC and FPGA –GRAF (Page 57 )
12. Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems –CHES (Page 61 )
13. Vision Imaging & Signal Processing Research Group‐ VISPro (Page 65 )
14. Data Engineering for Large Scale Applications Research Group‐DELSA (Page 68 )
15. Semantic Systems Research Group –SSRG (Page 74 )
16. PTCL, NUST Center of Excellence for IP Technologies (Page 82 )
17. Research Group for Off Grid Energy Resourcing – ROGER (Page 84 )
SEECS Distributed & Grid Computing Group
Theme Research in distributed computing problems and infrastructure, in particular related to grid computing, distributed data mining, web services, handheld devices and distributed databases & storage.
Objectives The objectives of the group are two fold: firstly, carry out advanced research in distributed computing software, infrastructure and tools; and secondly, to establish collaborations with international research institutes of repute in this area, to enable transfer of knowledge and technology to SEECS and Pakistan.
Application domain High Speed Data Transfer & Distributed Network Storage
Project in collaboration with Caltech (USA) is underway, enabling high speed data transfer to manage terabyte to petabyte of scientific data transfers worldwide from European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva. (2007‐now)
PeertoPeer Computing
This project involves development of a Peer‐to‐Peer application development framework and set of API, tools and utilities (2008‐now)
Grid computing Projects in this direction include Grid‐enabled Knowledge Management System (2001‐2002), Distributed Agents for Mobile and Dynamic Services (2002‐2003), Heterogeneous Relational Databases for Grid Environments (2004‐2005), Grid‐enabled analysis on Handheld Devices (2003‐2004) and Grid‐enabled Analysis Environment (2004‐2005), DIANA Grid Scheduler (2005‐2007) and Grid‐enabled Data Mining (2006‐now)
Distributed Operating Systems The main project being undertaken in this area is PhantomOS (2005‐2008)
Web Services Projects in this area include JClarens (2003‐2005) and it’s many associated services.
Group Members
Dr Arshad Ali PhD Electrical Engineering Opto‐electronics, Distributed computing, Network Monitoring [email protected]
Tahir Azim MS Computer Science Phd Student at Stanford University Distributed computing, Web 2.0 and sensor networks [email protected]
Faisal Khan Bachelors in Information Technology MS Student at Wisconsin Madison Web services and distributed computing [email protected]
Kamran Soomro BE Software Engineering Distributed operating systems [email protected]
Badar Ahmed Bachelors in Information Technology Distributed computing, Peer‐to‐Peer Systems
Farooq Ahmed Bachelors in Information Technology(Ongoing) Distributed computing, Peer‐to‐Peer Systems
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Publications Arshad Ali, Richard McClatchey, Ashiq Anjum, Irfan Habib, Kamran Soomro, "From Grid Middleware to Grid Operating System", International Conference on Grid and Cooperative Computing 2006, GCC 2006.
Irfan Habib, Kamran Soomro, Ashiq Anjum, Richard McClatchey, Arshad Ali, Peter Bloodsworth, "PhantomOS: A Next Generation Grid Operating System", UK eScience All Hands Meeting 2007 (AHM07), Nottingham, UK, September 2007
Arshad Ali, Ashiq Anjum, Julian Bunn, Faisal Khan, Richard Mcclatchey, Harvey Newman, Conrad Steenberg, Michael Thomas, Ian Willers. “A Multi Interface Grid Discovery System.”. 7th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Grid Computing, September 2006.
Associated Labs Caltech Lab ‐SEECS
Research Projects Enabling High Speed Data Transfer And Distributed Storage in High Energy Physics
Kamran Soomro, Faisal Khan, Badar Ahmed
Tourist Based Peer‐to‐Peer Services Framework Faisal Khan, Badar Ahmed
PhantomOS Irfan Habib (UWE/CERN), Shuaib Khan, Usman Ajmal, Kamran Soomro
Superpeer Discovery Service Mudassir, Shoaib, Ammarah Kahlon
Grid Data Mining Sheroz Aftab, Saeed Akhter, Momina Waqar, Omar Mukhtar
CMS Mirror Server Faisal Khan, Kamran Soomro.
International Collaboration
SEECS Distributed & Grid Computing Group has international collaborations with UWE, CERN and Caltech. Current projects
a) Enabling High Speed Data Transfer & Distributed Storage in High Energy Physics Introduction The aim of this project is to meet the computing needs of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva.
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Problem statement To enable high‐speed data transmission and distributed storage of large amounts of data. Motivation The extraordinarily large amounts of data that will be produced by the LHC has created a need to develop tools that can manage it and make it available for Physicists to use. Progress Tools for high‐speed data transfer and distributed storage have already been developed. Their integration with the data flow management tools in use by the US CMS collaboration is underway. Results Data transfer speeds of 110 Gbps have been demonstrated in collaboration with Caltech using the tools developed. Future directions We hope to integrate the tools with the data flow and job submission management (PhEDEx) system in use by the US CMS collaboration. b) Tourist Based PeertoPeer Services Framework Introduction Peer‐to‐peer (P2P) networks work by building an overlay network on top of existing physical infrastructure of networks. This project uses a recent P2P overlay routing algorithm, Tourist. Tourist promises great improvements over existing overlay routing algorithms and thus has been the routing algorithm of choice in this project. Problem statement The aim of this project is to develop a framework for Peer‐to‐Peer application development which is lightweight, extendable and portable to resource constrained devices. Motivation To enable the application developers to harness the power of Peer‐to‐peer computing in an easy to use manner Progress Most of the modules for this system have been built. However, the system is in a prototype phase, and needs substantial amount of work to make it useful in real‐world applications. The framework implementation is in C++, along with a Java based P2P visualization tool. Results The framework is working well up until a 100 peer system, & most of its functions of routing & message delivery are working well. There are serious scalability issues right now in the framework, which needs fixing.
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Future directions The future work involves many tasks including memory performance analysis, which would minimize some of the scalability issues. Secondly, there is need for comprehensive performance evaluation of the framework, which includes collecting test results for routing efficiency, self‐adaptivity testing, including level distribution. Also some additional features need to be added to the framework like periodic refreshing of routing table. Also there are many other areas of research that are possible, once the framework is complete. This framework would act as a software platform which would allow lots of different research on P2P computing, it’s behavior patterns and would allow improvements to existing algorithms and techniques. Techniques like locality aware routing and peer lifespan based routing need to be explored which increases the routing efficiency of overlay networks.
c) PhantomOS Introduction The aim of PhantomOS (internal development name is GridOS) is to target those barriers to adoption in user oriented fields. PhantomOS is an operating system which aims to migrate Grid computing from the Middleware to the operating system level. With this we will target the most profound technical barriers to the adoption of Grid computing and make it relevant to the day‐to‐day user. We believe this proposed transition to a Grid operating system will drive more pervasive Grid computing research and application development and deployment in future. Members Irfan Habib (UWE/CERN), Shuaib Khan, Usman Ajmal, Kamran Soomro Problem statement To create a system that can provide operating system‐level support for Grid applications. Motivation Grid computing has made substantial advances during the last decade. Various developments have contributed to this, which include the advancements in high‐speed networking technologies and the adoption of standardized Grid Middleware (Globus, gLite, UNICORE etc). There are, however, significant barriers to the more pervasive adoption of Grid computing in other fields, most notably day‐to‐day user computing environments. We believe these barriers can be broken if we provide operating system‐level support for Grid environments. Progress Most of the modules for this system have been built. However, the system is in a prototype phase, and needs substantial amount of work to make it useful in real‐world applications.
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Results Results from the prototypes developed so far show that a Grid‐enabled operating system can significantly improve on the performance of Grid applications.
Future directions We are aiming in two main directions. Firstly, we want to complete the current prototype into a production phase. Secondly, we are hoping to convert the existing prototype to use virtual machine migration capabilities to make the system more useful for the scientific community. d) CMS Mirror Server Introduction 'CMS Mirror Server' is an integrated tool to let scientists download distributed physics datasets by resolving their locations using official CMS catalogs – Data Bookkeeping System (DBS) and Data Location Service (DLS). The mirror server work is part of larger project that aims at integrating official CMS data management tools with Ultralight's [4] high speed data transfer utilities. Members Faisal Khan, Kamran Soomro Motivation One significant task which physics community wants to achieve is to gain access to their desired data before everyone else. Currently they use official storage management / transfer tools provided by CMS collaboration. Following this approach they will have to compete in terms of resources with other peers looking for similar kind of data. We suggest that the more effective way of doing this is by using the specially written software which the scientists could tweak easily based on his requirements and priorities. Progress & Results Its first version is complete including its integration with our high speed data transfer tools called FDT (Fast Data Transfer). Future Direction We need to update the existing version in order to incorporate changes to DBS/DLS.
Past Projects Grid‐enabled Knowledge Management System (2001‐2002) Distributed Agents for Mobile and Dynamic Services (2002‐2003) Heterogeneous Relational Databases for Grid Environments (2004‐2005) Grid‐enabled analysis on Handheld Devices (2003‐2004) Grid‐enabled Analysis Environment (2004‐2005) JClarens (2003‐2005) and its many associated services
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Contracts and Grants Obtained A grant worth $100,000 was received from the US State Department/Ministry of Science and Technology Pakistan in 2004‐05.
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Muhaqiq Centre for Measurement and Analysis of the Global Grid and
Internet EndtoEnd Performance (MAGGIE)
Theme Measurement and Analysis of the Global Grid and Internet End‐to‐End Performance is a collaborative research initiative by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) USA and NUST‐SEECS, Pakistan. It involves students, faculty and professionals from both sides working on various development and research issues related to Computer Network End‐to‐End Performance Monitoring and Evaluation.
Objectives The growth of the Internet has fostered intellectual and economic growth of both developed and developing countries. Fundamental to this is the operation and maintenance of the underlying Internet technologies to keep the network functioning. Our ambitions include (but are not limited to) enable Pakistan's advanced education and research facilities to better understand and utilize network connections. We believe that to efficiently manage any network one needs to be able to measure it. Our efforts include measuring and understanding current and long‐term performance, identifying and reporting problems both end‐to‐end and within the network itself, and providing forecasts of both long and near term performance. In this context our efforts can be summarized as: Conduct research, development, and evaluation of computer network end‐to‐end performance measurement tools and techniques.
Develop analytical procedures to derive reliable results from the performance statistics gathered.
Support collaborative research projects by measuring the network performance of the platform used for communication.
Produce computer network experts capable of doing development for innovative and large‐scale computer network applications.
Application Domain Internet Performance Measurement, Internet Communications, Computer Network Performance Measurement, Network Event Detection and Diagnosis, Network Performance Forecasting and Distributed Systems.
Current Group Members Arshad Ali, Co‐PI, Ph.D., [email protected] Les Cottrell, Co‐PI, Ph.D., [email protected] Umar Kalim, Coordinator & Supervisor, MS, [email protected] Fida Hussain, Research Assistant, MS, [email protected] Shahryar Khan, Research Assistant, BS, [email protected] Qasim Bilal Lone, Research Assistant, BS, [email protected] Fahad Ahmad Satti, Research Assistant, BS, [email protected]
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Publications Les Cottrell, Umar Kalim, “A case study of the regional and worldwide connectivity of Sub Saharan Africa, 2009”, will be published at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), 2009.
Les Cottrell, Umar Kalim, "Network Monitoring Report for International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) Standing Committee on Inter‐Regional Connectivity (SCIC) 2009", prepared for ICFA‐SCIC 2009.
Umar Kalim, “A case study of the regional and worldwide connectivity of East Asia, 2008”, published at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), 2008, available online https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/East+Asia+ Case+Study.
Fida Hussain, Umar Kalim, Noman Latif, Syed Ali Khayam, “A Decision‐Theoretic Approach to Detect Anomalies in Internet Paths”, submitted to 28th Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) 2009.
Les Cottrell, Qasim Bilal, “A case study of the effects of the fibre outage through the Mediterranean in January 2008”, published at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), 2008, available online [https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/ display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean].
Les Cottrell, Qasim Bilal, Jared Greeno, "Network Monitoring Report for International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) Standing Committee on Inter‐Regional Connectivity (SCIC) 2008", prepared for ICFA‐SCIC 2008.
Shahryar Khan, Les Cottrell, Umar Kalim, Arshad Ali, “Quantifying the Digital Divide: A Scientific Overview of Network Connectivity and Grid Infrastructure in South Asian Countries”, in the proc. of CHEP 2007.
Les Cottrell, Shahryar Khan, “International Committee for Future Accelerators – Standing Committee for Inter‐Regional Connectivity (ICFA‐SCIC) Network Monitoring Report 2007.
"Quantifying and Mapping the Digital Divide from an Internet Point of View", accepted for publication in Proc of 4th International Conference on Bridging the Digital Divide ‐ Asian Applied Computing Conference (AACC 2007)
Aziz A. Rehmatullah, R. Les Cottrell, Jerrod D. Williams, Arshad Ali “Quantifying the Digital Divide: A Scientific Overview of the Connectivity of South Asian and African Countries” CHEP 06, Bombay, India
R. L. Cottrell, M. Chhaparia, F. Haro, F. Nazir, M. “Evaluation of Techniques to Detect Significant Network Performance Problems using End‐to‐end Active Network Measurements”, Standford, NOMS 2006, April 2006.
Fareena Saqib, Umar Kalim, Arshad Ali, “Network Weather Forecasting in Gird systems”, in proc. of HONET 2006.
Asif Khan, Arshad Ali, “MoMon: single ended, plug n play Grid Monitoring tool” in proc. of GridNets 2006.
Talks Les Cottrell, Umar Kalim, “African Cyber‐infrastructures” at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2009 session in Vienna, Austria 19‐24 April, 2009.
Associated Labs Research Lab, SEECS, NUST
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Research Projects Project title Detection of Anomalies in Internet Paths 1 Team members
Fida Hussain (RA), Umar Kalim, Noman Latif (BIT 6)
Supervised by Dr. Ali Khayam, Dr. Les Cottrell, Dr. Arshad Ali Started in Spring 2008 Current status In progress Reference https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Decision+The
oretic+Approach Project title TULIP: Trilateration Utility for Locating IP hosts 2 Team members
Qasim Bilal Lone (BIT 4), Shahryar Khan (BIT 4), Faran Javed (BIT 5)
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Ejaz Ahmed, Umar Kalim Started in Fall 2004 Current status In progress Reference http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan‐mon/tulip/ Project title Traceanal: Trace route analysis 3 Team members
Qasim Bilal (BIT 4)
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Connie Logg Started in Early 2005 Current status Completed in Fall 2008 Reference http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/iepm‐
bw.slac.stanford.edu/tracesummaries/today.html Project title End to End Performance Monitoring 4 Team members
Fahad Ahmed Satti
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Umar Kalim Started in Spring 2007 Current status Completed in Fall 2008 Reference http://maggie2.niit.edu.pk/wiki/index.php/EPM Project title Federation: SmokePing, PingER Integration 5 Team members
Asma Shamshad (BIT 4) and Shahryar Khan
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Umar Kalim Started in Spring 2006 Current status Completed in Fall 2007 Reference https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/PingER+Smo
keping+Integration Project title PingER Metrics Motion Charts 6 Team members
Umar Kalim
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Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell Started in Fall 2008 Current status Completed in Fall 2008 Reference http://www‐iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/pinger‐metrics‐
motion‐chart.html Project title PingER Metrics Intensity Maps 7 Team members
Umar Kalim
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell Started in Fall 2008 Current status Completed in Fall 2008 Reference http://www‐iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/intensity‐
maps/pinger‐metrics‐intensity‐map.html Project title PingER Sites Google Map 8 Team members
Shahryar Khan, Qasim Bilal Lone
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell Started in Spring 2008 Current status Completed in Fall 2008 Reference http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan‐
mon/viper/tulipmap.htm Project title ViPER: Visualization for PingER 9 Team members
Shahryar Khan (BIT 4)
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Umar Kalim Started in Spring 2006 Current status Completed in Spring 2007 Reference http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan‐mon/viper/ Project title NWF: Network Weather Forecasting (using ARMA/ARIMA) 10 Team members
Fareena Saqib (BIT 4)
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Mr. Umar Kalim Started in Spring 2006 Current status Completed in Spring 2007 Reference http://maggie.niit.edu.pk/nwf_projectdesc.html Project title Topological Analysis and Network Performance
Visualization 11
Team members
Asif Khan (BIT 4)
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Yee Ting Lee, Umar Kalim Started in Spring 2005 Current status Completed in Spring 2007
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Reference http://maggie.niit.edu.pk/topoanalysis_projectdesc.html Project title AMP PingER Integration 12 Team members
Mr. Abdullah Jan
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Jerrod Williams, Umar Kalim Started in Spring 2005 Current status Completed in Fall 2007 Reference http://maggie.niit.edu.pk/pingerampint_projectdesc.html Project title Anomaly Detection Using Principal Component Analysis 13 Team members
Adnan Iqbal (Ph.D. student)
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell Started in Spring 2005 Current status Halted work since Fall 2007 Reference http://maggie.niit.edu.pk/netandet_projectdesc.html Project title PingER Visualization 14 Team members
Rabail Javed (BIT 5)
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Ejaz Ahmed, Umar Kalim Started in Spring 2005 Current status Completed in Fall 2007 Reference http://maggie.niit.edu.pk/newwebsite/
pingervisualization_projectdesc.html Project title PingER Executive Plots 15 Team members
Akbar Mehdi
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Umar Kalim Started in Spring 2006 Current status Completed in Fall 2006 Reference http://maggie.niit.edu.pk/ pingerexecplot_projectdesc.html
http://www‐iepm.slac.stanford.edu/pinger/prmout/ Project title PingER Management 16 Team members
Mr. Waqar Ali
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Jerrod Williams, Umar Kalim Started in Spring 2006 Current status Completed in Fall 2006 Reference http://maggie.niit.edu.pk/pingermanagement_projectdesc.html
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi‐wrap/downsites.cgi Project title Evaluation of Techniques to Detect Significant Network
Performance Problems using End‐to‐End Active Network Measurement
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Team members
Fawad Nazir
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell Started in Spring 2005 Current status Completed in Spring 2006 Reference http://maggie.niit.edu.pk/documents/fawad‐nazir.pdf Project title NWF: Network Weather Forecasting (using Holts‐Winter) 18 Team members
Asher Shoukat
Supervised by Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Les Cottrell, Ejaz Ahmed Started in Spring 2005 Current status Completed in Fall 2005
Grants Obtained 1. Title: “Network Performance Monitoring for PERN” Funding Body: Higher Education Commission (HEC)
Approved Funding: 36.853 Million Rupees Duration: Jan 2008 to July 2010.
Executing Body: National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (SEECS)
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SEECS Open Mobile Squad SOMS
Theme
Open. Mobile. Free. SEECS Open Mobile Squad (SOMS) was created in January 2009 by Dr. Arshad Ali. SOMS is established for creating a Linux mobile development culture in SEECS and behaving as a hub for other Pakistani universities in this regard. In the initial run, the Openmoko’s Smartphones are sponsored by SEECS. The devices provide students a golden opportunity; to play/unlock the completely documented mobile device. Open: Opening up the formerly‐closed mobile world Mobile: Mobile devices are the future of communication Free: 100% Free Software from driver through UI
Objectives
The main objective of the group is to develop an understanding in the new emerging field of open mobile development. The group will explore and do experimenting with multiple open mobile platforms and frameworks; existing in the mobile eco‐system. The group provides an opportunity to have a hands‐on experience in the state of the art wireless and mobile technologies. The group will also prepare students with a kind of skill set so they can compete in global competitions and challenges organized by Google and Intel every year with their projects which will add value to the existing system.
• Understanding Open mobile technology • Getting hands on experience • Hacking mobile • Building mobile from scratch
Application domain
• Linux mobile application development • Linux mobile platforms and frameworks • MobileOS • Mobile Computing • Mobile communication technologies • Wireless communication technologies • Linux device drivers • Gadgets interfacing with smart phones • Open Source in Mobiles
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Group Members
Dr. Arshad Ali PhD, USA [email protected]
Dr. Fauzan Mirza PhD, UK [email protected]
Dr. Ali Khayyam PhD, USA [email protected]
Syed Ali Haider MSc, UK [email protected]
Students Mr. M Qasim Ali Mr. Asad Rehman Mr. Salamn Majeed Mrs. Iqra Arshad Mr. Khuram Shahzad Mr. Usama Shahid Mr. Wahib‐ul‐Haq Mr. Raja Ehtisham Mr. Fahad Abid Mr. Robert Mehfooz Mr. Omer Farooq Khan Mr. Sibguat‐Ullah
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Organization of conferences and workshops
• Open mobile seminar • Openmoko an Introduction • Openmoko Supported frameworks • Qtopia’s QT C++ GUI Application framework • Eclipse SWT Library
Associated Labs
3G and Communication lab Research Projects
Funded Projects
Mobile handheld computing devices like PDAs, Smartphones and Tablet PCs are becoming more popular, and major players in the market of desktop computing are now focusing on this fastest growing emerging market. With the popularity growth, security threats like viruses, trojans, worms, bacteria, spam, and other malware are becoming a serious concern in these devices as well. As a result, security issues of mobile computing are attracting the attention of a large number of researchers both in industry and academia.
Unconventional techniques of Computational Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Immune Systems should be explored to build an optimized and light weight security system. The proposed secure kernel framework will provide adequate security against malware threats and Denial of Service attacks (DoS) on network interfaces (GSM/GPRS and WLAN) of the mobile devices.
The project aims to develop secure kernel framework that enable self‐monitoring, and consequently self‐healing operation for an operating system of mobile devices. This is expected to produce a fully functional Secure Linux Kernel that will be run on tablet PCs / smartphones. The developed framework will be fully aware of system conditions and resource usage and will schedule different threads intelligently based on each thread/process’ behavior, thus providing a truly secure computing experience in which malware that manages to escape detection by intrusion detection systems gets thwarted in the scheduler.
The project will also result in software that will utilize (Artificial Immune System) AIS and (Intrusion Detection System) IDS for detecting potentially dangerous programs and files. This software will be installable on smartphones. The software will emphasize minimum user intervention while ensuring system security.
The key benefits of this project are given below:
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• This project will provide a self‐aware, self‐monitoring, self‐protecting comprehensive kernel framework that will secure mobile computing devices from viruses, trojans, worms, bacteria, spam, and other security threats.
• This framework will also provide a reliable and scalable detection and protection from denial of service attacks (DoS) on network interfaces like GSM/GPRS and WLAN.
• A Unique feature of this host security solution is that it will also provide the network security. All the hosts that will use secure kernel framework will not let the malware to execute and propagate. So network will also become secure from malware security threats.
• The techniques and methodologies developed during this project are expected to attract several enterprises and mobile OS developing companies to invest in startups and they can use the product as an important framework for further development.
Project Director: Dr. Muddassar Farooq National University of Computer and Energing Sciences (FAST‐NU), Islamabad [email protected]‐dortmund.de
Joint Project Director: Dr. Syed Ali Khayam NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Islamabad [email protected]
Brainstormed Projects
a) Controlling robots with Freerunner
The lego robots that are available in SEECS have Bluetooth dongles built in, so we can use openmoko freerunner to control the actions of the robots by using the concepts of telemetry. It’s like robots interfacing with openmoko using Bluetooth protocol. b) USB camera interfacing openmoko
Openmoko’s freerunner don’t have a built‐in camera but it has USB host port which allows developers to interface any USB device with it. c) Open GSM radio
That idea is little tricky and have a direct impact on the business model of GSM cellular providers. The idea is to configure the device in such a way that GSM module of the devices can make communication with other devices’ GSM module in a peer to peer fashion rather then routing the call from the BS. d) Smartphone virtualization
Now a couple of vendors have created Smartphones with processor speeds 500MHz or so and multiple frameworks exist in the FOSS (Free open Source Software) community.
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There is a need to use the concept of virtualization where a Smartphone can have dual OS. e) Ad hoc wireless network
Areas when struck by any natural or force disasters; like earthquakes which destroys the existing cellular system. Due to this reason different rescue operations can’t be carried out efficiently and effectively. In this scenario, the Smartphone carrying by the rescue guys will establish an ad hoc network using built‐in wifi module; which will extend up to the time they find some node in the cellular network range. f) Embedding RFID card in Freerunner
The world’s first open and user‐customizable mobile phone is open both in terms of hardware and software. This provides developers to test their hacking capabilities and tweak their phones the way they like or rightly said imagined. The PCB circuit files are available form openmoko.org. Openmoko’s first product was developed their own developers named NEO1973 which was just a simple mobile but later on when the FOSS community catches their idea, they start embedding different technologies like Bluetooth, WIFI, GPS and accelerometers. Now the simple neo is now turned out to be a Smartphone but couples of things are still missing like RFID and Camera. g) Integration of micro projectors with openmoko hardware
After reviewing the evolution process of mobile phones it is very much clear that every technology wants to sink into the small little fellow of everyone the mobile phone. Different companies are looking towards creating micro‐projectors like the 3M's MM200. If we get that gadget interfacing openmoko with this will be great and who knows openmoko gets that projects and release their new devices with miro‐projectors build‐in. h) Homogeneous Cross platform framework
The year 2008 was considered to be year for mobile Linux because of the fact that a couple of frameworks were popped up in the same year. Different vendors launch their own frameworks as listed hereunder:‐
• Qtopia Phone Edition for Trolltech GreenPhone
• Openmoko’s FOS Freerunner OS
• Openmoko’s Om2007.2 and Om2008.9 for Neo1973 and Freerunner
• Google’s Android for gphone
• Java linux mobile platform ‐ JavaFX
• Intel’s Maemo Hildon architecture for UMPC – Ultra‐Mobile PC
• Linux foundation’s Mobilin for MIDs Mobile Internet Devices
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• Linux GNOME mobile architecture
• Azingo mobile framework
• MontaVista Linux
• Ubuntu Mobile
• LiPs application architeture
• Access’s hiker application and some others due
Due to this the market is no so much fragmented that he need of homogenous cross platform framework is required.
International Collaboration • OpenLab
Communicating with Openmoko’s OpenLab in Taiwan • Mokoversity
The mokoversity (http://mokoversity.org/) provides summer internship opportunity and the only organization which is created, funded and sponsored by Openmoko Inc. for the involvement of openmoko with academic institutions. They conduct trainings and workshops on openmoko products and related technologies. We are trying to make efforts to get benefit from their resources.
Contracts and grants
PKR 14.99 million from ICT R&D Fund for the project titled: “An Intelligent Secure Kernel for Next Generation Mobile Computing Devices”
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Reconfigurable Computing Research Group Theme To do research and development of product using this new computing paradigm so as to adapt the hardware during runtime by "loading" a new circuit on the reconfigurable fabric Objectives Adaptive implementations of communication coding in reconfigurable hardware Adaptive systems on a chip Reconfigurable Architectures Networks Applications Application domain Satellite communications Cryptography Signal processing Image and video processing Intelligent sensors and measurement systems Software radio Group Members
Nasir Mahmood MS , China Embedded Systems Design, Reconfigurable computing 925190852113, 92513215160554, [email protected]
Dr. Rehan Hafiz PhD , UK Image Processing and DSP 051‐90852105, 0331‐5189556, [email protected]
Muhammad Ramzan MS, Australia Communication and DSP 051‐90852113, 0300‐5260446, [email protected]
Arshad Nazir MS, NUST Pk Telecommunication 051‐5590546, 0300‐5527590, [email protected]
Muhammad Ali Awan MS, Sweden ASIC and Embedded System 0966‐714411, 0345‐5127323
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Raw Network Data Collection and Classification
Introduction Network traffic patterns have changed significantly with the introduction of triple‐play services, making the earlier traffic classifications obsolete, hence giving rise to the need for re‐classification of network data. This is useful both for the industry, for making intelligent business decisions as well as testing purposes, and for basic networking research for workload generation in simulations and characterization of network traffic patterns. Huge amount of data needs to be collected, stored and analyzed from various devices within the network for this purpose. This is no trivial task as the amount of raw data passing through a single edge/core node in today’s high‐speed networks can easily reach peta‐bytes, requiring sophisticated procedures for storage and later analysis and classification of the data. Objectives Various techniques will be studied for the offline storage of data in a distributed manner. Tools will also be developed that can analyze and help in classifying the data. Details Students: Adeel Muhammad Malik Usama Qayyum Advisor: Dr. Khurram Aziz Co‐Advisor: Dr. Khalid Latif International Co‐advisor: Dr. Abdul Waheed, Cisco Systems, USA
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NUSTSEECS Networks Research Group
Theme NUST‐SEECS Network Research Group (NNRG) was established in 1999 by Dr. S. M. Hassan Zaidi. NNRG promotes education, research and outreach in the field of computer networks, and ultra‐high speed data communications including photonics/wireless communications. Objectives NRG promotes education, research and outreach in the field of ultra‐high speed data communications. Faculty members and students work in synergy to explore the problems in the application areas like Passive Optical Networks, Switching in Optical Networks, Radio‐over‐fiber, Bandwidth Allocation in Passive Optical Networks. Its mission is to prepare the next‐generation of researchers and developers in these areas by investigating challenging and high‐impact research projects. It aims to represent a complementary mix of both theoretical and applied experimental research. Application domain Optical Networks Passive Optical Networks Optical Burst Switching Networks Radio‐over‐fiber IPv6‐over‐fiber Group Members Dr. S M H Zaidi (Group Chair)
Qualification: PhD., USA Area of research: Optical Networking +92 (0)51 9085 2003, [email protected]
Engr Mohammad Ramzan Qualification: MS. Australia Area of research: Radio‐over‐fiber +92 (0)51 9085 2113, [email protected]
Dr. Khurram Aziz Qualification: PhD., Austria Area of specialization: Performance Evaluation of Finite Queueing Systems. Communication Networks. +92 (0)51 9085 2261, [email protected]
Mr. Moin‐ud‐Din
Qualification: MS Area of research: Probability and statistical methods [email protected]
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Syed Ali Haider Qualification: MSc., UK Area of research: Optical Networks, Wireless Networks +92 (0)51 9085 2267, [email protected]
Ms. Savera Tanvir Qualification: MS, USA Area of research: Optical Networks +92 (0)51 9085 2183, [email protected]
Publications during period 200708
Haider Raza, Muhammad Ramzan, S M H Zaidi, “SOA based all optical frequency up‐conversion enabling multi‐band service for optical wireless access network”, HONET, Pennang, Nov 2008 Malaysia.
Savera Tanwir, Lina Battestilli, Harry G. Perros and Gigi Karmous‐Edwards, "Dynamic Scheduling of Network Resources with Advanced Reservations in Optical Grid", ACM Journal of Network Management, 2008
Fatima Yousaf, Savera Tanwir, SMH Zaidi, “Light Path Provisioning using Connection Holding Time and Flexible Window”, International Conference on Telecommunications and Networking (TeNe 08)
Asim Shafique, Savera Tanwir,Kanwar Saad and S.M.H Zaidi, “QoS in Mode‐0 of Bimodal burst Switching”,HONET 2008, Penang, Malaysia
Faraz Arshad, Sarfraz Rasheed Ramay, Savera Tanwir, Lina Battestilli, S.M.H Zaidi, “Advance Reservation and Dynamic Scheduling of Point to Multipoint Lightpaths”, HONET 2008, Penang, Malaysia
L. Battestilli, A. Hutanu, G. Karmous‐Edwards, D. Katz, J. MacLaren, J. Mambretti, H. Moore, S‐J Park, H. Perros, S. Sundar, S. Tanwir, S. Thorpe, and Y. Xin, “EnLIGHTened Computing: An architecture for co‐allocating network, compute, and other grid resources for high‐end applications”, HONET 2007, Dubai.
Waqas Ayub, M Ramzan, Syed Ali Haider, Syed Zaidi, “Radio‐Over‐Fiber (RoF) architecture integrating broadband wireline and wireless services”, HONET, Malaysia, 18‐20 November 2008
Faaiz Hussain, Ali Haider, Moin‐ud‐Din, S. M. Hassan Zaidi, “Effecctive contention resolution scheme to achieve minimum burst loss in OBS Network”, 4th International Symposium on High Capacity Optical Networks and Enabling Technologies (HONET), Dubai, 18‐20 November 2007
Muhammad Kamran, Dr. S. M. H. Zaidi, Muhammad Ramzan ,“Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation Algorithms in TDM Ethernet Passive Optical Networks:A Review”, ICOCN 2007, Islamabad
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Mansoor Gul Toor, Dr S.M.H Zaidi, Kamran Hussain Zaidi, “Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation in WDM Ethernet Passive Optical Networks: A Review”, ICOCN 2007, Islamabad
Ammar Rafiq, Muhammad Ramzan, S. M. H. Zaidi, “Comparative Analysis of scheduling frameworks for efficient wavelength utilization in WDM EPON”, ICEE 2007, UET Lahore
Organization of conferences and workshops in 200708
National Conferences and Workshops One Day Workshop on Nanophotonics and its Applications in High Speed Networks, 05 June 2008, SEECS
International Conferences and Workshops
International Symposium on High Capacity Optical Networks and Enabling Technologies (HONET 08), 18‐20 Nov 2008, Penang, Malaysia Coorganized by NUSTSEECS and UNCC
Labs associated with your research group PTCL/NUST/CISCO Research Lab Research projects International Collaboration Current Projects
A.) DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION ALGORITHM IN TDMPASSIVE OPTICAL NETWORKS
Introduction: Ethernet passive optical networks (EPON) are an emerging access network technology that provides a low‐cost method of deploying optical access lines between a carrier’s central office (CO) and a customer site. In TDM EPON there is a single channel shared by all the users using TDM approach. Downstream: The traffic is broadcasted to all the ONUs over the shared wavelength channel. Upstream: The common wavelength channel is shared among ONUs by time slot allocation.
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Objectives: In this project we propose to enhance the QoS based bandwidth allocation algorithm (Non‐Linear Predictor based Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation) to solve the last‐mile access bottle‐neck for Passive Optical Networks Details: Student: Usman Khalid Mufti Advisor: Mr. Ali Haider Co‐Advisor: Dr. S. M. H. Zaidi International Co‐advisor: Dr. Yasin A Raja, UNCC, USA B.) QOS IN BIMODAL BURST SWITCHING Introduction OBS is a switching technique. It is between OPS &OCS. In this control plane and data plane are seprate. Control packet is processed in electrical domain where as data burst travels all optically. Innovative OBS based scheduling algorithm having zero burst loss and low overhead is Bimodal Burst Switching (BBS). BBS has two modes Mode 0 (for the edge node having small distance from the core). Mode1. (for the edge node having large distance from the core)
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Objectives: To implement QoS in BBS Details: Students: Talha Imran and M.Usman Afzal Advisor: Savera Tanwir Co‐Advisor: Dr S.M.H Zaidi International Co‐Advisor: Dr. Harry Perros, North Carolina State University, USA C.) WIRELESS OPTICAL BROADBAND ACCESS NETWORK (WOBAN)
Introduction: Quad‐play, bandwidth intensive applications and entertainment are demanding for more sophisticated, resilient, power efficient as well as high data rate networks at lower costs. Hybrid Fiber Radio (HFR) networks are potential solutions to the current requirements. Wireless Optical Broadband Network (WOBAN) is one such HFR architecture with high capacity fiber backhaul and wireless mesh at frontend to provide mobility with higher data rates. WOBAN has its roots in Networking Aspects of wireless optical converged network.
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Objectives: Propose and simulate an improved architecture of WOBAN along with more efficient algorithm for wireless routing in WOBAN Details: Student: Muhammad Arshad Advisor: Dr. SMH Zaidi Co‐Advisor: Miss Saver Tanwir International Co‐advisor: Dr Biswanath Mukherjee, UC Davis, USA E.) RESILIENCY IN WOBAN Introduction: Hybrid Wireless Optical Broadband Access Network (WOBAN) is an integration of wireless and optical networks. The Optical Network(PON) provides the high bandwidth where as the Wireless Network provides the end user with mobility and flexibility. The head end of PON is connected to the Control Station while the tail end is terminated at wireless gateway routers. The wireless part of WOBAN is a mesh of routers which provide connectivity to the end user through multiple hops. The objective of providing Resiliency to WOBAN is to provide the end user the degraded service instead of no service because WOBAN can experience multiple failures due to its hybrid architecture.
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Objectives: To improve the performance of WOBAN architecture by making it resilient against network failure. The failure scenarios may be gateway failure, ONU failure, and/or OLT failure. Details: Student: Aqeel Ahmad Qureshi Advisor: Dr. S.M.H. Zaidi Co‐Advisor: Mr. Muhammad Ramzan International Co‐advisor: Dr Biswanath Mukherjee, UC Davis, USA F.) DYNAMIC OPTICAL CIRCUIT SWITCHING Introduction: Because of bandwidth‐hungry applications our networks particularly long‐haul, Telecom, Backbone mesh networks require high capacity and novel switching methods. As compared to OPS and OBS, DOCS architecture supports setting up large bandwidth pipes on demand, fast reconfigurability, and strict service guarantees to allow these type of bandwidth requests. DOCS architecture employs small and cheap dynamic circuit switches that require no per‐packet processing or buffering, require about 90% less hardware, much higher switching capacity, and cost about four times less than an equivalent packet switch.
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Objectives: Improve or propose a new algorithm for efficient resource utilization of optical networks using dynamic optical circuit switching. Details: Student: Ali Munir Advisor: Dr. S. M. Hassan Zaidi Co‐Advisor: Ms Savera Tanwir International Co‐advisor: Dr Biswanath Mukherjee, UC Davis, USA G.) PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF FLOW TRANSFER MODE
Introduction: All‐packet networks are more suited to data transfers where variable delay, jitter and out of order packet arrival can be tolerated. Increasing peer‐to‐peer multimedia traffic however, has different needs that cannot be fully satisfied by packetized communication. Optical burst switching was a step in that direction, as it created end‐to‐end flows with constant delay. At the same time, tunneling bypassing techniques like MPLS emerged that reduced the packet processing at intermediate nodes. A better way to use tunnel bypass is by using switched transmission systems like SDH/SONET, OTN and WDM. Flow Transfer Mode (FTM) is a generalization of OBS whereby circuit‐, burst‐ and packet‐switching can be realized by one single universal method. They form flows of different lengths in time and are created by one single control unit transmitted in advance. Scheduling control occurs at layer 2 or 3 in order to initialize data flows, while actual flow transfer happens at layer 1.
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Flows can be ultra‐short in case of a single packet, or ultra‐long for packetized or plain payload transmission of a whole video session.
Objectives: This project aims to evaluate the performance of FTM and compare it with OBS and packetized data transmission for various types of data flows, using various analytical models as well as simulation. Details: Student: Muhammad Imran Advisor: Dr. Khurram Aziz Co‐Advisor: Dr. S.M.H. Zaidi International Co‐advisor: Dr. Harmen R. van As, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Past Projects NUST Survivable Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON )based Optical Access Network with Triple Play Support International Co‐Advisor: Dr. Yasin A Raja, University of North Carolina, USA MS Thesis
Dynamic Bandwidth Management for hybrid TDM/WDM EPONs International Co‐Advisor: Dr. Yasin A Raja, University of North Carolina, USA MS Thesis
Performance Analysis of Optical Burst Switching (OBS) Networks International Co‐Advisor: Dr. Harry G Perros, North Carolina State University, USA UG Thesis
FULL‐DUPLEX WDM COMPATIBLE RADIO‐OVER‐FIBER SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE International Co‐Advisor: Dr. Yasin A Raja, University of North Carolina, USA MS Thesis
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Time Quantum based Online Scheduler (TQOS) International Co‐Advisor: Dr. Nasir Ghani, Maxico State University, Mexico MS Thesis
National Collaboration
Current Projects
Past Projects
Partially online dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) algorithm for Hybrid TDM/WDM EPON
Wavelength Assignment Using Closest Wavelength Tuning Dynamic Routing through Spontaneous Resource Reservation Minimizing the Effect of imprecise network state information through the reduction in Communication and Storage Overheads
Mitigating effects of Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks on E‐Commerce Sites and Networks
TCP SYN Flood Sensor for Internet Backbone Enterprise Application Security Framework Design and Implementation of Security mechanism for NUST Intranet Performance Evaluation and Enhancement of Mobile Adhoc Routing Protocols Performance Evaluation of TCP in Mobile Ad hoc Networks Bandwidth constrained QoS routing with mobility management in ad hoc networks
Network Traffic Generator Design and Implementation of Intranet for NUST and its constituent colleges Automation of Network Labs Building and Performance Evaluation of an MPLS Domain Implementation and Analysis of Ameliorated Cells in Frames Architecture Mitigating Denial‐of‐Service Attacks using Dynamic Ingress Filtering Mechanism Routing and Wavelength Assignment algorithms in IP over DWDM Networks
Industrial Linkages
Nayatel Pvt. Limited MCNC, North Carolina, USA
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Nanotechnology Research Group Theme To overcome the national needs and initiate real research in the emerging technology Objectives The main objective of this Research Group is to carry out intensive research in the following areas Synthesis and characterization of nanostructures and thin films by utilizing simple and environmentally friendly techniques.
Synthesis of nano particles and thin films which will be capable to purify water and environment upon irradiation with visible light.
Exploration of physical properties of nano particles and their applications to novel electronic and photonic devices technology
Application Domain Water Purification Solar Cell Development Electronic Devices Group Members Mr. Ruh Ullah MS(Microelectronic/ nanotechnology), Thailand MSc (Physics) Pakistan Synthesis and applications on nano particles [email protected]
Dr. N. D. Gohar PhD electrical Engineering VLSI(CAD) [email protected]
Mr. Abrar Mohammad Butt MS (Material Science) TU Delft Holland Physics and Chemistry of Materials [email protected]
Ms. Shama Rehman M.Phil (Physics) QAU Pakistan Synthesis of Nanomaterials [email protected]
Publication Ruh Ullah, Joydeep Dutta, “Photodegradation of Organic Dyes With Manganese Doped ZnO Nanoparticles” Journal of Hazardous Materials, 156 (2008)194‐200 [Impact Factor: 2.337 JCR2007
Ruh Ullah and Dr. Joydeep Dutta, “Photocatalytic activities of ZnO nanoparticles synthesized by wet chemical techniques”, Proceedings of IEE, International Conference on Emerging Technologies Peshawar, November 2006 (ICET ‐2006 Peshawar), Page 353‐358.
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Ruh Ullah, and Joydeep Dutta, “Photocatalysis with Mn‐doped ZnO nanoparticles” (Presented at nano2006 international Conference, Bangalore, India
Ruh Ullah and Joydeep Dutta “Synthesis and Optical Properties of Transition Metal Doped ZnO Nanoparticles” Proceedings of IEE, International Conference on Emerging Technologies Islamabad November 2007 (ICET ‐2007 Islamabad), Page 305‐311
Ruh Ullah, Sunandan Baruah, Faizur Rafique Rahman, and Joydeep Dutta "ZnO nanoparticles and Nanowires semiconductor doping, a way towards visible light photocatalysis", ISNEPP 2007, International Symposium on Nanotechnology in Environmental Protection and Pollution, 11‐13 December 2007, The Bahia Mar Beach Resort and Yachting Hotel, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, (Asia Pacific Nanotechnology Forum)
A. M. Butt, Ruh Ullah, N. D. Gohar, and S. Rehman “Mechanisms Influencing Photo Induced Reactivity in Titanium Dioxide", manuscript in submission
S. Rehman, Ruh Ullah, N. D. Gohar, and A. M. Butt, “Advancements in Visible Light Photocatalysis", manuscript in submission to Applied Catalysis (B) Environmental.
Associated Labs Electronics Lab Nano Technologies Lab National Collaboration Quid‐e‐Azam University Islamabad Peshawar university Peshawar Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology Topy Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources Islamabad Research Projects Current Projects
a) Design and Development of Water Purification Technologies using Nanotechnology
Introduction Nanotech water‐purification technologies include photocatalytic materials, where water passing through a nanomaterial is also subjected to ultraviolet light, leading to the destruction of contaminants such as pesticides, industrial solvents and germs. Since Fujishima & Honda obtained H2 by decomposition of H2O using TiO2 as a photocatalyst in the 1970s, the techniques has attracted substantial attention as a potential process for photo‐electrochemical energy production and photocatalytic removal of various organic and inorganic venoms from air and water. The basic principle of semiconductor photocatalysis involves the migration of photo‐generated electrons and holes to exposed surfaces where they can react with adsorbed reactants (O2 and H2O) as redox sources, leading to the production of high oxidant reagent (Hydroxyl radical and supper‐oxide ) and subsequently the decomposition of pollutants. Photocatalysis can be extended by using various techniques that enable ceramic/other membranes to photo‐plate heavy metals onto a counter electrode making this process favorable for remediating mixed waste
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streams, naturally polluted water. Compared with other water purification technologies, photocatalysis has excellent capability of removal of volatile organic compounds and inorganic compounds, chemical stability, is not toxic, and is applicable in air and environment purification as well. In recent years, researchers and engineers have paid special attention to nano‐sized ZnO/TiO2, using as a photocatalyst which has several advantages compared to the bulk material. Members Mr. Ruh Ullah (PI) Dr. N. D. Gohar (CoPI) Mr. Abrar Mohammad Butt Ms. Shama Rehman Problem Statement Photocatalysis via metal oxide semiconductor (such as TiO2 and ZnO) and UV/visible light has been used for last two decades as purification tool. Self cleaning through super hydrophilicity and decomposition of volatile organic compounds in to carbon dioxide, water and mineral salt are its two precious practical applications. This research will based upon the decomposition of volatile organic compounds and inorganic compounds along with bacteria killing via photocatalytic techniques from drinking water using visible light as energy source. Up till now photocatalysis techniques have been commercialized (e.g. Self cleaning window glass, in/outdoor environment purification etc...) that make use TiO2 nanoparticles coated on surfaces and irradiated with UV light. Solar spectrum on the earth surface has only 5% to 7% of the UV light while the remaining spectrum has 46% of visible light and 47% infrared radiation. This smaller amount of UV light in the solar spectrum has lessened the practical utilization of photocatalysis for purification of water and environment. We will develop a techniques with which semiconductor photocatalyst be able to generate electron hole pair upon exposing only to visible light and can subsequently decompose volatile organic compounds and might also be capable to destroy bacteria from dirking water. Progress and Result The project has been successfully approved for funding worth Rupees 7.294 M by Ministry of Science and Technology Pakistan. Intellectual work is continue since the date of submission, while experimental work has been recently started at Institute of Environmental Science and Engineering (IESE) NUST. Future Directions The project may be extended for bacteria disinfection and solar cell development.
Grants Obtained Funding worth Rupees 7.294 M from Ministry of Science and Technology Pakistan.
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Wireless, Internet & Security Research (WISNET) Research group name Wireless, Internet & Security Research (WISNET) Group Research group theme Wireless, Internet & Security Research (WISNET) Lab was established in 2007 by Dr. Syed Ali Khayam. The key intent behind the conception of this research group was to produce international‐quality research work on cutting‐edge problems. We have been working in the areas of Wireless Networks, Multimedia Communications, Network and Information Security, and Network Performance Analysis.
Objectives To research cutting‐edge problems in three main focus areas: 1) wireless networks; 2) Internetworking; and 3) Information and network security.
To train and produce high‐quality graduate and undergraduate students with expertise in the above focus areas.
To work in collaboration with industry on state‐of‐the‐art practical problems.
Application domain Wireless and Wired Networks Intrusion Detection Multimedia Communications Information Security
Group Members o Dr. Syed Ali Khayam
Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, Michigan State University, USA Wireless Networks, Network Security, Performance Evaluation of Network Architectures and Protocols, Analytical Modeling of Complex Networking Phenomena [email protected]
o Ali Sajjad MS Computer Engineering Kyung Hee University, South Korea [email protected]
o Dr. Fauzan Mirza Ph.D. Information Security, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK Cryptology, especially Design and Crypt Analysis of Symmetric Key Ciphers, Malicious Software Analysis, Software Copy Protection and Digital Watermarking, Network Security, Digital Forensics and Investigation [email protected]
o Adnan Iqbal
Ph.D. student Wireless channel modeling, Bit error rate estimation, Reliability on MAC layer [email protected]
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o Hassaan Khaliq
Ph.D student Wireless channel modeling & Hierarchical clustering algorithms in wireless Sensor networks [email protected]
o Ayesha Binte Ashfaq
Ph.D student Networkbased Anomaly Detection [email protected]
o Junaid Jameel Ahmed
MS student Wireless multimedia, Wireless Sensor networks & Wireless Channel Modeling [email protected]
o M. Qasim Ali
MS student Networkbased Anomaly Detection [email protected]
o Syed Fida Hussain Gillani
MS student Internet paths [email protected]
o Syed Masood Ali
MS student Internet Bandwidth Change Detection & Optimization of Streaming Applications [email protected]
o Maria Joseph Robert
Research Assistant Networkbased Anomaly Detection [email protected]
o Sajjad Rizvi
Research Assistant Networkbased Anomaly Detection [email protected]
o Yousra Javed Research Assistant Web based Malware Detection [email protected]
o Mobin Javed
Research Assistant Information Hiding [email protected]
Publications during period 200708
Syed Ali Khayam and Hayder Radha, "Maximum‐Likelihood Header Estimation: A Cross‐Layer Methodology for Wireless Multimedia," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 6, no. 11, pp. 3946‐3954, November 2007
Syed Ali Khayam, Hayder Radha, Selin Aviyente, and John R. Deller, Jr., "Markov and Multifractal Wavelet Models for Wireless MAC‐to‐MAC Channels," Elsevier Performance Evaluation, vol. 64, no. 4, pp. 298‐314, May 2007.
Syed Ali Khayam, Shirish Karande, Muhammad Usman Ilyas, and Hayder Radha, "Header Detection to Improve Multimedia Quality over Wireless Networks," IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 377‐385, February 2007.
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Ayesha Binte Ashfaq, Maria Joseph Robert, Asma Mumtaz, Muhammad Qasim Ali, Ali Sajjad, and Syed Ali Khayam, "A Comparative Analysis of Anomaly Detectors under Portscan Attacks," Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection (RAID), September 2008.
Muhammad Saleem , Syed Ali Khayam, and Mudassar Farooq, "Formal Modeling of BeeAdhoc: A Bio‐Inspired Mobile Ad Hoc Network Routing Protocol," International Conference on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence (ANTS) , September 2008.
M. Zubair Shafiq , Syed Ali Khayam, and Mudassar Farooq, "Embedded Malware Detection using Markov n‐grams," Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware & Vulnerability Assessment (DIMVA) , July 2008.
Muhammad Saleem , Syed Ali Khayam, and Mudassar Farooq, "A Formal Performance Modeling Framework for Bioinspired Ad Hoc Routing Protocols," ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computing Conference (GECCO), July 2008.
M. Zubair Shafiq, Syed Ali Khayam, and Mudassar Farooq, "Improving Accuracy of Immune‐Inspired Malware Detectors using Intelligent Features," ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computing Conference (GECCO), July 2008.
Adnan Iqbal and Syed Ali Khayam, "Improving WSN Simulation and Analysis Accuracy Using Two‐Tier Channel Models," IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), May 2008.
Adnan Iqbal, M. Khurram Shahzad, and Syed Ali Khayam, "SRVF: An Energy‐Efficient Link Layer Protocol for Reliable Transmission over Wireless Sensor Networks," IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), May 2008.
Sohraab Soltani, Syed Ali Khayam, and Hayder Radha, "Detecting Malware Outbreaks using a Statistical Model of Blackhole Traffic," IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), May 2008.
Syed Ali Khayam, Hayder Radha, and Dmitri Loguinov, "Worm Detection at Network Endpoints using Information‐Theoretic Traffic Perturbations," IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), May 2008.
Waqas Bukhari and Syed Ali Khayam, "Equitable MAC Layer Performance Comparison of Cooperative Diversity Protocols for Wireless Networks," IEEE Sarnoff Symposium, April 2008.
M. Zubair Shafiq, Mudassar Farooq, and Syed Ali Khayam, "A Comparative Study of Fuzzy Inference Systems, Neural Networks and Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference Systems for Portscan Detection," European Workshop on the Application of Natureinspired Techniques to Telecommunication Networks and other Connected Systems (EvoCOMNET), March 2008.
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Syed Ali Khayam and Hayder Radha, "Comparison of Multimedia Transport Schemes over Markovian Wireless Channels," Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, November 2007.
Syed Ali Khayam and Hayder Radha, "Using Session‐Keystroke Mutual Information to Detect Self‐Propagating Malicious Codes," IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), June 2007.
Syed Ali Khayam and Hayder Radha, "On the Impact of Ignoring Markovian Channel Memory on the Analysis of Wireless Systems," IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), June 2007.
Shirish Karande, Syed Ali Khayam, Yongju Cho, Kiran Misra, Hayder Radha, Jae‐Gon Kim, and Jin‐Woo Hong, "On Channel State Inference and Prediction using Observable Variables in 802.11b Networks," IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), June 2007.
Yongju Cho, Syed Ali Khayam, and Hayder Radha, "A Multi‐Tier Model for BER Prediction over Wireless Residual Channels," International Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), March 2007.
Associated Labs WAVES Lab at Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA Internet Lab at AJOU University, Suwon South Korea Information Security Research Group (ISRG) at NUST‐SEECS Center for Applied Network Research (CANR) at NUST‐SEECS Center for High Performance Scientific Computing (CHSPC) at NUST‐SEECS Next Generation Intelligent Networks Research Center, Pakistan Research projects International Collaboration Current projects
a.) HYBRID AND ADAPTIVE ERROR RECOVERY PROTOCOL FOR IP
MULTIMEDIA STREAMING Project funded by Nokia Research, China.
Introduction Under this project, we are developing an adaptive protocol for a generic IP video streaming application that is crossing heterogeneous wired/wireless segments. Under such heterogeneous setting, it is anticipated that (virtually) each (or a majority of) received packet(s) will suffer from a certain degree of bit‐level errors. We refer to these bit‐level errors as the error process of the IP video streaming application.
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Handling the erroneous IP video packets that are corrupted by a time‐varying error process using an adaptive protocol is a focal objective of the proposed project. A hybrid of two competing approaches, namely retransmissions and forward error correction (FEC), will be considered in support of the adaptive protocol. One or a hybrid of these two approaches will be selected by the adaptive protocol in response to the underlying error process. The proposed protocol will act as a transport mechanism and decision logic for the RTP layer. The transport mechanism will ensure timely delivery by choosing the appropriate error recovery strategy based on inferred error behavior, RTP’s RTT (Round Trip Time) estimates, and application QoS requirements. The proposed protocol will adaptively choose appropriate parameters for the two error recovery schemes using error behavior (rate, burstiness, etc.,) and QoS constraints (latency, data rate, bandwidth, etc.)
Members • Dr. Syed Ali Khayam • Dr. Arshad Ali • Hassan Aqeel • Adnan Iqbal • Junaid Jameel Ahmed • Maryam Hafeez
Problem Statement To develop and evaluate a robust, error resilient adaptive protocol for multimedia streaming
Motivation After the unprecedented success of IP networks, most emerging access and edge networks are migrating to an IP‐based protocol stack irrespective of the underlying physical media. Moreover, integrated voice, video and data services on a unified IP‐based platform are being supported in emerging networks. Support for multiple services on different physical media places complex requirements on the design of multimedia applications with stringent QoS constraints. To simultaneously cater for content and medium heterogeneity on emerging IP networks, we need adaptive error recovery and repair scemes that can seamlessly detect and adapt to different physical media and application QoS.
Progress We have collected residual bit‐error traces of 802.15.4 and 802.11 networks. These traces are publicly available at CRAWDAD website. Preliminary Analysis of data is has been carried out and statistical models are derived using this analysis. These models are also mapped to algorithm design and adaptive coding techniques are being formulated.
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Results The proposed scheme of BER estimation under this project is proved to be better than any exiting schemes and these results are summarized in the Table I.
Future Directions We aim to evaluate the proposed protocol on a large set of traffic traces.
b.) ENERGY EFFICIENT VIDEO COMPRESSION FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
Project funded by Nokia Research, China.
Introduction Wireless video sensor networks are anticipated to be deployed for monitoring of remote geographical areas. In order to save energy during bit transmissions/receptions over a video sensor network, the captured video content needs to be encoded before being transmitted to the base station. However, video encoding is an inherently complex operation that can cause a major energy drain at energy‐constrained sensors. Thus a systematic evaluation of different video encoding options is required to enable a designer to choose the most energy‐efficient compression technique for a given video sensing application scenario.
Members
Syed Ali Khayam Hassan Aqeel Khan Junaid Jameel Ahmad
Problem Statement Under this project, we are designing video compression algorithms for wireless sensor networks that can be used to monitor inaccessible geographic regions. While
TABLE I: BER ESTIMATION ERROR AVERAGED OVER AT LEAST 5 TRACES PER SETUP, EACH TRACE CONTAINED 1 MILLION PACKETS Scheme Setup1 Setup2 Setup3
Partial FEC 0.0001 0.0007 0.0005 Traditional FEC 0.0173 0.0513 0.0363
SNR 0.0091 0.025 0.014 Redundant Data 0.254 0.242 0.251
Pilot Interleaved 0.013 0.0186 0.167
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energy‐efficiency is a fundamental constraint for any wireless sensor network, it becomes more critical in the video sensing applications because of the nature of the captured content (video) and the harsh natural conditions that are generally observed in a disaster‐struck area. Video processing is inherently computation‐ and bandwidth‐intensive and therefore consumes a significant portion of the sensor’s, limited, energy resources due to excessive computations and bit transmission. We are developing low‐complexity and bandwidth‐efficient video processing and coding algorithms that can be deployed on sensor motes without consuming significant computational or transmission energy. These algorithms should also be able to adapt to the different weather conditions. All the algorithms proposed in this work will be deployed on a wireless sensor network testbed and will be tested under realistic physical conditions.
Motivation Due to limited energy resources at sensor motes, the most fundamental constraint on any WSN application or protocol is energy efficiency. Two main sources of energy drain in a sensor mote are local computations and bit transmissions/receptions. Video transmission incurs both types of energy depletion as video content is bandwidth‐intensive (requiring significant bit transmissions/receptions) and video compression is an inherently complex operation (requiring significant local computations). In this context, video communication over WSNs presents an interesting complexity‐compression tradeoff. On the one hand, in video sensors the idea of performing a high degree of compression to reduce the number of bit transmissions/receptions seems appealing. On the other hand, use of a complex compression technique will result in a considerable increase in the number of local computations at the sensor. A systematic comparison/investigation of the computational/transmission energy depletion of these different video coding alternatives on actual sensors motes is required to study the complexity‐compression tradeoff for wireless sensor networks.
Progress In this project, we have evaluated the energy consumptions of three video coding alternatives for wireless sensor networks. These three video coding alternatives include:
1) Change‐Detected Predictive Video Coding (PVC) 2) Predictive Video Coding without Change‐Detection 3) Distributed Video Coding (DVC).
For all of these three video coding paradigms, we separately evaluated the energy consumptions for both the video encoding computations and video transmission. All evaluation is performed over the Stargate sensor platform mounted with TelosB, MICA and MICAz transceivers. Furthermore, based on our evaluation, we have identified the main energy consuming blocks in the encoding schemes of PVC and DVC paradigms and proposed energy saving modifications to these blocks. We have
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shown that by employing the proposed modifications, significant energy savings can be realized for the encoding schemes of both PVC and DVC paradigms. In addition, for all the video encoding configurations evaluated in this project, our results revealed the counter‐intuitive and important finding that the major source of energy drain in WSNs is local computations performed for video compression and not video transmission. The findings of this work are submitted for publications in the form following papers:
• Junaid Jameel Ahmad, Hassan Aqeel Khan, and Syed Ali Khayam, "Energy Efficient Video Compression for Wireless Sensor Networks,” submitted to the 43rd IEEE Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), 2009
• Junaid Jameel Ahmad, Hassan Aqeel Khan, and Syed Ali Khayam, “Performance Evaluation of Compression Schemes for Wireless Video Sensor Networks” submitted to the Elsevier Performance Evaluation Journal (PEVA), 2009
Results Throughout this project, we presented our results keeping the following questions in mind: 1) Which video encoding options (inter/intra/DVC video coding with/without change‐detection) provide better energy efficiency? 2) How much energy efficiency is provided by these different video encoding options? 3) What is the impact of different video characteristics (mobility, frequency content) on energy efficiency? 4) Does change‐detection help in improving energy efficiency? 5) In what proportion do change‐detection, local computations for encoding, and bits transmissions contribute to the overall energy depletion at the sensors?
Energy Efficiency of Predicative Video Coding
The energy consumptions of change‐detected and non change‐detected Predictive Video Coding are evaluated in
Figure 1. Note that, for both of these change‐detected and non change‐detection cases, inter coding always consume higher amounts of energy than intra coding. We can also observe that, for both inter and intra coding of video sequences without prior change‐detection consumes less energy as compared to change‐detection PVC. Furthermore, we proposed to use MJPEG2K based intra coding than H.264 based intra coding. From Figure 2, we can clearly see that, MJPEG2K based intra coding achieves significant energy savings in comparison to H.264 intra coding.
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Figure 2: Distribution of energies for MJPEG2K intra coding
Figure 3 displays the proportion in which encoding computations and bit transmissions contribute to the overall energy depletion for MJPEG2K based intra coding. We can see here that again, on average, the computational energy depletion constitutes the major portion (72.85%) of the total energy consumption as compared to the bit transmission energy (27.15%), and is thus the dominating factor in determining the overall energy consumption in a video sensor network.
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Figure 3: Distribution of energies for MJPEG2K intra coding.
Energy Efficiency of Distributed Video Coding For the DVC paradigm, our evaluation results show that the PRISM encoder depletes more energy than the Wyner‐Ziv encoder. Next, we also proposed complexity reducing modifications to both of these DVC encoders. Figure 4 (a) and (b) show the total energy depletions of our modified versions of PRISM and Wyner‐Ziv encoders against the original PRISM and Wyner‐Ziv encoders, respectively. From both of these plots, we can see that the proposed modifications significantly reduce the overall energy depletion.
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(a) PRISM coding vs PRISM* coding. (b) H.264 based Wyner‐Ziv coding vs MJPEG2K based Wyner‐Ziv coding
Figure 4: Total energy depletions of Original and Improved DVC encoders.
Figure 5 (a) and (b) show the energy depletion proportions for PRISM*, MJPEG2K based Wyner‐Ziv encoders respectively (GOP = 2). It is quite obvious that DVC encoders also tend to follow the same trend in terms of energy depletion i.e. most of the energy depletion results due to encoding computations, the contribution from bit transmissions is minor in comparison.
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89.98%
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GOP 2
Figure 5: Distribution of energies for Improved DVC
Future Directions In future, we will be working to deploy our wireless sensor network testbed in different types of environment and will enhance it to detect and adapt to its surroundings. In particular, the algorithms should operate under different weather (sunshine, rain, snow etc.) and lighting conditions
i. National Collaboration
1. Current projects A.) DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT OF AN OPENSOURCE ENTERPRISE NETWORK
SECURITY SOLUTION Project funded by Pakistan National ICT R&D Fund.
Introduction
Since the CodeRed worm of 2001, malware attacks have emerged as one of the most prevalent and potent threats to network and host security (From 2006 to 2007, the total number of malicious code attacks reported by Symantec showed a phenomenal increase of 468%). Many network‐based anomaly detection systems (ADSs) have been proposed in the past few years to detect novel network attacks. Since malicious portscans are the vehicle used by malware and other automated tools to locate and compromise vulnerable hosts, some of these anomaly detectors are designed specifically for portscan detection, while other detectors are more general‐purpose and detect any anomalous traffic trend. Most of the network‐based anomaly detectors model and leverage deep‐rooted statistical properties of benign traffic to detect anomalous behavior. A variety of theoretical frameworks including
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stochastic, machine learning, information‐theoretic and signal processing frameworks–have been used to develop robust models of normal behavior and/or to detect/flag deviations from that model. However, very little effort has been expended into comparative evaluation of these recent ADSs for the portscan detection problem.
Such a comparative evaluation would enable us to identify the strengths and weaknesses in the current security solutions and would assist us in the development of a robust system that can provide high detection rates accompanied by low false alarms.
Members
• Dr. Syed Ali Khayam • Mr. Ali Sajjad • Ayesha Binte Ashfaq • Maria Joseph Robert • Asma Mumtaz • Muhammad Qasim Ali
Problem Statement To perform a comprehensive comparative performance evaluation of prominent anomaly detection systems, so as to provide a broad basis for future benchmarking
Motivation Since the seminal 1998/1999 DARPA evaluations of intrusion detection systems, network attacks have evolved considerably. In particular, after the CodeRed worm of 2001, the volume and sophistication of self‐propagating malicious code threats have been increasing at an alarming rate. Many anomaly detectors had been proposed, especially in the past few years, to combat the new and emerging network attacks. At the time, it was important to evaluate existing anomaly detectors to determine and learn from their strengths and shortcomings. Progress Significant milestones have been achieved with ADS prototypes developed and tested leading to a publication in one of the world’s best security conferences RAID2008.
Results Our results show that some of the evaluated anomaly detectors provide reasonable accuracy with low detection delay. However, these detectors do not provide sustained accuracy on both the datasets. Our results show that some of the evaluated anomaly detectors provide reasonable accuracy with low detection delay. However, these detectors do not provide sustained accuracy on both the datasets.
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Figure 6: ROc Analysis of ADSs on Endpoint dataset
Figure 7: ROC Analysis of ADSs on Router‐based dataset
Future Directions Currently we are working on porting the best performing anomaly detection system, with proposed changes incorporated, on multi‐core systems.
B.) NETWORKEMBEDDED SECURITY USING INNETWORK PACKET MARKING Project funded by Pakistan National ICT R&D Fund.
Introduction Over the last few years, the phrase “The Internet is Broken” has been repeatedly used to highlight the current Internet’s inability to combat network attacks, such as self‐propagating malware and distributed denial‐of‐service attacks. While the jury is out on whether this phrase is appropriate or hyperbolic, security professionals widely agree that the original Internet design with a “trust‐everybody” approach is naïve and needs at the very least to be reconsidered or to be scrapped altogether. Moreover, there is widespread consensus that in the next‐generation Internet the
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entire burden of security cannot be assigned to the endpoints and edge networks, and that some notion of security needs to be embedded into the network core.
The primary objectives of this project are:
(a) The development of theoretically‐sound, practical and scalable security‐based packet marking methods, including security‐induced packet marking at wire‐speeds within the core network.
(b) The development of robust strategies for the discarding (or more generally
“handling”) of security‐marked malicious packets while ensuring stability, fairness and convergence objectives for benign and legitimate flows.
Members • Dr. Syed Ali Khayam • Dr. Fauzan Mirza • Irfan ‐ ul – haq • Sardar Ali • Naurin Ramay • Anam Sarfraz
Problem Statement Under this project, we will investigate a network‐embedded security framework, in which the endpoints, the edge networks and the network core act in a coordinated and practical manner to defeat high‐rate traffic attacks. The objective of this project is to indigenously research a state‐of‐the‐art network security solution in Pakistan.
Motivation Successful completion of this project can result in the proposed solution being incorporated into the next generation Internet design thereby resulting in significant research credibility and wealth generation for Pakistan.
Projects with Industry Design and Development of an Enterprise Anomaly Detection Solution
Over the last decade, system security threats have evolved from human intruders to sophisticated malware. With the evolution of these attack methodologies, the field of intrusion detection has inevitably evolved with detection of malicious network attacks becoming its main focus. Based on the results of research in this area, there is widespread agreement in the security community that network anomaly detectors, which detect zero‐day attacks by flagging deviations from a model of
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benign behavior, are the most robust and scalable method of detecting network‐wide anomalies. Despite this consensus, anomaly‐based Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) have not received widespread deployment. The problem with contemporary anomaly detectors is that they are inaccurate (low detection rates and/or high false alarm rates), incur unreasonable detection delays and require human intervention. While a plethora of IDSs have been proposed in research publications and patents, most of these IDSs are unable to achieve product‐quality accuracy and detection delays. Moreover they require human intervention to combat with the inherently varying nature of traffic characteristics. Under this project, we research and develop an accurate and real‐time enterprise intrusion detection and prevention solution to detect zero‐day network attacks. This solution will consist of two main components: a passive anomaly detector and an active anomaly detector. (A potential deployment strategy for the proposed solution is shown in Figure 8) The active anomaly detector will preemptively and quickly detect Internet‐scale and targeted threats and will also facilitate attack forensics. The anomaly detector will evaluate existing and new traffic features of incoming and outgoing traffic for real‐time attack characterization. These features will be used for attack detection in novel information‐theoretic, statistical, and machine learning frameworks. The second component of the proposed solution, the passive anomaly detector, will be designed to capture incoming traffic that is bound for inactive IP addresses and ports inside an enterprise network. The passive detector will develop a baseline model of misconfigured incoming network traffic. Deviations from this model will be used to detect malicious traffic patterns.
Figure 8: An example topology for the proposed anomaly detector
Patent filed/approved
1. Patents Filed in US PTO a. Patent 1: Header Estimation to Improve Multimedia Quality over
Wireless Networks
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b. Patent 2: On Channel State Inference and Prediction using Observable Variables in 802.11b Networks
2. Patents Filed in IPO Pakistan
a. Patent 1: A Method For Embedded Malware Detection b. Patent 2: Detection of Traffic Anomalies in a Computer Network
Contracts and grants obtained Won the following R&D funding from the ICT:
• Rs. 6.148 Million for the project “Design & Development Of An Open‐Source Enterprise Network Security Solution”
• Rs. 8.88 Million for the project “Network‐Embedded Security using In‐Network Packet Marking”
WISNET has also won R&D funding from the Nokia Research Center, China: • € 10,000 for the projects “Hybrid And Adaptive Error Recovery Protocol For IP
Multimedia Streaming” and “Energy Efficient Video Compression For Wireless Sensor Networks”
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Next Generation Communication Technologies Research Group Theme The aim of this group is to explore and exploit the research potential in the field of next generation communication and contribute usefully to the ongoing standardization of these technologies Objectives To investigate the issues at the physical, MAC, network and application layer for the next generation communication technology
To address the aspects of signal processing involved To produce quality publications as an outcome of research To establish industry‐academia linkages and research collaborations Application domain Wireless Communication Mobile Communication Satellite Communication Communication Networks
Group Members
Dr Khurram Aziz www.niit.edu.pk/~khurram.aziz Ms.Khalida Noori www.niit.edu.pk/~khalida.noori Ms Madeeha Owais www.niit.edu.pk/~madeeha.owais Ms Ayesha Bint Saleem www.niit.edu.pk/~ayesha.saleem
Publications during period 200708
Journal Publications • Khalida Noori, S A Haider (2007),“A layered structure MIMO OFDM system with
channel equalization”, Journal of Digital Information Management, vol. 5, No. 6, December 2007.
• S A Haider, Khalida Noori (2007), “Adaptive turbo coded OFDM”, Journal of Digital Information Management, vol. 5, No. 6, December 2007.
Conference Proceedings • Khalida Noori, S A Haider (2007), “Comparison of coded and uncoded vertical and
horizontal layered structure MIMO OFDM system” Proceeding of 9th International Conference on Advance Communication Technology.
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• Khalida Noori, S A Haider (2007), “Channel equalization of MIMO OFDM system using RLS algorithm”, Proceeding of 3rd International Conference on Wireless Communication, Networking and Mobile Computing.
• S A Haider, Khalida Noori, Shoab Ahmed Khan (2007), “Performance improvement of Layered MIMO OFDM system using turbo codes” Proceeding of 3rd International Conference on Wireless Communication, Networking and Mobile Computing.
• Khalida Noori, S A Haider, Shoab Ahmed Khan (2008), “An Efficient estimation algorithm for MIMO OFDM system using Turbo Codes”, Springer book “Novel Algorithms and Techniques In Telecommunications, Automation and Industrial Electronics”, ISBN no 978‐1‐4020‐8736‐3, pp‐405‐408.
• M Talha,J Ahmed, K Noori, S A Hiader (2008), “Bit error rate comparison of MC‐CDMA and OFDM system” Proceeding of International conference on computer sciences and information technology.
• Khalida Noori, S A Haider, Shoab Ahmed Khan (2008), “An Efficient estimation algorithm for MIMO OFDM system using Turbo Codes”, Proceeding of 4th International Joint Conferences on Computer, Information and System Sciences and Engineering.
Research Projects National Collaboration Current Projects
Design Analysis and Simulation of IDMA Design and development of Automatic Frequency Planning Tool Application of layered structures to MC‐CDMA
Past Projects
Combination of MIMO with MC‐CDMA Adaptive OFDM System MIMO OFDM System Performance Analaysis of OFDM System by using FEC Techniques Comparison of DS‐CDMA and MC‐CDMA
Projects with Industry Current Projects
Design and development of Automatic Frequency Planning Tool
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Center for High Performance Scientific Computing Theme To conduct research in parallel computing paradigms and applications Group objectives Support cutting edge scientific and engineering projects Conduct research, development, and evaluation of parallel programming languages, libraries, paradigms
Produce HPC experts capable of doing development for innovative science and engineering
Application Domain Parallel Computing, High Performance Computing, Grid Computing, Computational Science, Computational Astrophysics Group Members 1. Aamir Shafi, Group lead, Ph.D., [email protected] 2. Samin Khaliq, Researcher, Masters, [email protected] 3. Hammad Siddiqi, Researcher, Masters, [email protected] 4. Umar Butt, Sun certified System Administrator, Masters [email protected] 5. Aftab Hussain, Research Assistant, [email protected] 6. Ammar Ahmad Awan, Research Assistant, [email protected] 7. Jawad Manzoor, Research Assistant, [email protected] 8. Faisal Zahid, BIT‐7 Student, [email protected] 9. Ahmed Ali Gul, BIT‐7 Student, [email protected] 10. Zafar Gillani, BIT‐7 Student, [email protected] 11. Kamran Hameed, BIT‐7 Student, [email protected] 12. Muhammad Wakeel, Masters Student, [email protected] Publications 1. Aamir Shafi, Bryan Carpenter, Mark Baker, and Aftab Hussain, A Comparative Study of
Java and C Performance in Two Large Scale Parallel Applications, To appear in Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 2009
2. K. Chanchio, C. Leangsuksun, H. Ong, V. Ratanasamoot, and A. Shafi, An Efficient Virtual
Machine Checkpointing Mechanism for Hypervisor‐based HPC System, High Availability and Performance Computing Workshop, Denver USA, 2008.
3. Aamir Shafi, Aftab Hussain, and Jamil Raza, A Parallel Implementation of the Finite‐
Domain Time‐Difference Algorithm using MPJ Express Java Workshop at the 22nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, Miami Florida USA, April 2008.
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4. Mark Baker, Bryan Carpenter, and Aamir Shafi, A Buffering Layer to Support Derived
Types and Proprietary Networks for Java HPC, Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience, pp 343–358, 8(4), ISSN 1895‐1767, December 2007.
Organization of Conferences and Workshop
1. Workshop on How to Build and Configure Supercomputers, 21st Jan – 22nd Jan, 2008
2. Workshop on Solaris 10 Intermediate System Administration Training, 19th Feb – 23rd Feb, 2008
3. Workshop on Shell Scripting using Korn Shell, 9th June – 13th June, For Teradata Global Consulting Pakistan, 2008
4. Workshop on Scientific Computing using GPUs, 7th Aug – 8th Aug, 2008 5. Workshop on Shell Scripting using Korn Shell, 18th August – 22nd August, For
Teradata Global Consulting Pakistan, 2008 6. Workshop on Solaris 10 System Administration – Part 1, 13th Oct to 17th Oct, For
Nokia Siemens Network (NSN) Engineers, 2008 7. Workshop on Solaris 10 Intermediate System Administration – Part 2, 27th Oct to
31st Oct, For Nokia Siemens Network (NSN) Engineers, 2008 Labs Associated High Performance Scientific Computing Lab Research Projects/Grants 1. Title: “Collaborative Multicore Programming Using Scientific Java Messaging” Funding Body: British Council Role: Principal Investigator. Approved Funding: £ 40,000 Duration: September 2008 to August 2010. Executing Body: National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) 2. Title: “Establishment of Grid Node at SEECS” Funding Body: Higher Education Commission (HEC) Role: Project Director. Approved Funding: 34.82 Million Rs. Duration: Jan 2006 to December 2008. Executing Body: National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) 3. Title: “High Performance Computing Research and Development” Funding Body: National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) Role: Principal Investigator. Approved Funding: 2.0 Million Rs. Duration: August 2007 to June 2009
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Executing Body: National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) 4. Title: “Capacity Building of Lady Health Workers in Rural Mardan, NWFP through the use of ICT based Tele‐healthcare” Funding Body: Higher Education Commission and the US State Department under the Pak‐USAid Science and Technology Programme 2008
Role: Co Principal Investigator Approved Funding: $ 225,452.85 Duration: September 2008 to August 2010 Executing Body: National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST)
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Group for Research in ASIC and FPGA (GRAF) Theme The aim of GRAF is to develop an environment for research in FPGAs, FPGA Based System Design and SoC/SoPC. The group conducts research in many aspects of FPGAs including FPGA architecture exploration, high level design tools, reconfigurable computer architectures, and applications of FPGAs and reconfigurable hardware in a number of domains such as Video and Image Processing, DSP and Communication System Engineering and Networks‐on‐Chip. We are also keen in collaborative research with companies and academic groups who share common interest in state‐of‐the‐art research in the area of digital integrated circuits. Objectives Provide students the opportunity to work in advanced technological domain. Develop linkages with industry and to provide them with the highly motivated hardware engineers with diverse technical experience
Design efficient and reliable FPGA based systems Provide highly innovative and Cost‐effective FPGA based solutions to the local industry Application Domain FPGA and ASIC Design Group Members Dr. N.D. Gohar Principal Investigator Professor, HoD CSE PhD, ICSTM, UK [email protected] Mr. Jamshaid Sarwar Malik Visiting Faculty MS, KTH, Sweden Joint PhD student at NUST & KTH working on Software Defined Radio [email protected] Wg. Cdr. (R) Nasir Mehmood Assistant Professor MS (BUAA), China Joint PhD student at NUST & KTH working on Software Defined Radio [email protected]
Mr. Bilal Saqib Lecturer MSc, UoH, UK [email protected] Ms Saba Zia Research Assistant BICSE, SEECS, PK MS (Telecom)EE Student at NUST working on Software Defined Radio [email protected] Mr Fayyaz Rasool Lab Technician DAE, PBTE, PK [email protected] Mr. Rizwan Ashraf Lab Attendent DAE, Electronics, PK [email protected]
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Students Shahnawaz Muhammad Uzair Yasir Habib Farrukh Hijaz Syed Aamer Hussain Saad Aftab Publications
1. Shafqaat A., N. D. Gohar, Atif K., ”A Dynamic Congestion Control Mechanism for Real‐Time Streams over RTP”, Proceedings of IEEE 9th Int. Conference on Advance Communication Technologies, Pheonix Parks, Republic of Korea, Volume: 2, pp 961‐966, Feb. 2007.
2.Asma Latif, N. D. Gohar, “Signal Properties of Hybrid LFSK Modulated MQAM (HQFM) OFDM Transceiver” International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, Vol. 07 No. 11, ISSN‐ 1738‐7906, pp 72‐76, November 2007
3. Asma Latif, N. D. Gohar, “On the PAPR Reduction Properties of Hybrid QAM‐FSK (HQFM) OFDM Transceiver” International Journal of Applied Sciences , ISSN‐ 1812‐5654, pp 1061‐1066, 2008
4. Khurram Shahazad, N. D. Gohar, Arshad Ali “ESTP: An Energy‐efficient time synchronization protocol on wireless Sensor Networks” accepted for proceeding at 22nd IEEE AINA‐2008 International Conference.
5. Asma Latif, N. D. Gohar "A Hybrid MQAM‐LFSK (HQFM) OFDM Transceiver" has been accepted in International Journal of Communication Systems.
Organization of Conferences and Workshop One day workshop on “PCB Design Using OrCAD” held on 16th January, 2008 at Seminar Hall, SEECS Rawalpindi.
Three day workshop on “RF ASIC Design” held on January 5‐7, 2009 at CEFAR Lab, SEECS Islamabad
Associated Labs Associated CEFAR Lab
Hardware W2012 100MHz Oscilloscope GW Instek (model GLA1132) Spartan‐3 Starter Kit 2x Virtex‐4 (ML‐401)Evaluation Platform KIT
2x Virtex‐4 (ML‐403)Evaluation Platform KIT
Xilinx Virtex‐II Evaluation board
4x Xess Xstend KIT
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8x Xess XSA‐200 Board 2x Xess XSA‐3S1000 Board 8x Nextek Trainig Kit 200k FROM‐II
1553 Bus Cable PCMCIA 1553 card 4x MIL‐STD‐1553 Bus Coupler Proto Type Board 1553 Interface card 1553
1553 Transformer GPRS Modem GARMIN 10x kit 2x Micro‐controller Based Trainer
2x Digital Multimeter IC programmer RFID reader
Software
Simulation: ModelSim XE III v6.3c
Simulation: ModelSim XE III v6.2g
Synthesis: ISE Design Suite 8.2 Synthesis: Xilinx ISE v9.1i
Synthesis: ISE Design Suite 10.1
Chip Scope pro 9.2i Accelware DSP IP Tool kits PlanAhead™ Design Analysis Tool
PCB Design: OrCAD 9.2 Research Projects International Collaboration Current Projects
a) Software Defined Radio Development using a NetworkOnChip based Rapid Prototyping Platform Software‐Defined‐Radio is a technology that is still in a state of infancy. The project focuses on developing a Scalable, Flexible and Modular Radio Systems Experimentation and Prototyping Platform (REXAPP) based on NOC (developed at KTH, Sweden), to provide basic foundation for SDR digital processing‐a step forward in the development of future wireless communication systems. Major objective of the proposed project is to enable, enhance and expedite development of SDR targeting 4G technologies and beyond. For this purpose a Network on Chip based generic baseband processing and MAC layer processing platform will be developed.
National Collaboration/ Indigenous at CEFAR Current Projects
a) FPGA Based Portable Spectrum Analyzer FPGA based Spectrum Analyzer will be a signal analysis gadget with the maximum input signal frequency of 100 MHz. The offshoots of the project include Vibration Spectrum analysis in mechanical Testing; Video Spectrum Analysis for various defense and commercial applications; Spectral analysis of defense communications by Intel agencies and Lab usage by various universities and developers. The project is expected to be completed by March, 2009.
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b) FPGA Based Digital Signage System FPGA Based Digital Signage System will be connected to the internet using FPGA to receive data and control settings. Depending on the type of data, it is stored in either SDRAM or Flash memory. The system then accesses this data, decodes and displays it onto an LCD/TFT monitor. The project is expected to be completed by March, 2009.
Past Projects
a) FPGA Based MILSTD1553 Remote Terminal(RT)/Bus Controller(BC)/ Bus Monitor(MT) FPGA based MIL‐STD‐1553 RT / BC / MT implements the MIL‐STD‐1553 protocol on FPGA and allows the system to be configured as RT, BC or MT. This protocol is widely used in avionics especially the modern day fighter aircrafts like F‐16 and Mirage. The system then accesses this data, decodes and displays it onto an LCD/TFT monitor. The project is expected to be completed by March, 2009.
Projects with the Industry FPGA Based MIL‐STD‐1553 remote terminal/bus controller/ bus monitor FPGA Based Portable Spectrum Analyzer Contracts and Grants Obtained Won Rs. 26.91 Million Funding from ICT R&D Fund for a Project “Software Defined Radio Development using a Network‐On‐Chip based Rapid Prototyping Platform” vide reference no. ICTRDF/AN/2007/45 dated 6 March 2008.
Won Rs. 4.23 Million Funding from HEC under its University‐Industry Technology Support Program (UITSP) for a Project “Mil‐Std‐1553 FPGA Based Remote Terminal / Bus Controller / Bus Monitor” vide reference no. 1‐33/ILS‐UITSP/HEC/2006 dated 14 July 2006.
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Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES) Theme The group for Research in Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES) mainly focus in designing secure and highly optimized coprocessors for varied security applications in hardware. The optimization process may include low power optimization due to mobile devices, low area optimization due to constrained environments (RFIDs, Smart Card), high speed optimization due to speed critical applications (Satellite communications) and optimizations for security due to leakage of information. The group also investigates both the theory and application of security attacks (interruption, interception, modification and fabrication etc.), security services (authentication, data confidentiality, data integrity, access control and non‐repudiation), security Mechanisms (Encipherment, digital signature, notarization, traffic padding, authentication exchange etc) and cryptology in context of enterprise‐scale and distributed systems. The main research themes are:
Information Security Low power & high speed Embedded Systems
Objectives The overall objective of this group is to promote research in areas of information security and embedded systems. Thus to contribute in building knowledge base in order to produce skilled manpower to meet current security needs. And also to prepare students willing to pursue their postgraduate studies in these areas. Application Domain Computer, Network & Communication Security Security in Constrained Environments (smart cards, RFIDs, e‐commerce) Cryptology (Security algorithms, security protocols, security attacks) Optimized Coprocessors for Communication Systems FPGAs based System Design (low area, low power, high speed) Digital watermarking Group Members
Dr. Nazar Abbas Saqib Principal Investigator PhD, CINVESTAV‐IPN, Mexico [email protected]
Mr. Rehan Ahmed Lecturer MS (in progress), TUM, Germany [email protected]
Mr. A.D Usama Bin Najam Research Assistant MS in Communication System Engineering‐SEECS‐NUST Pakistan [email protected]
Ms Freeha Azmat Research Assistant Cryptographic Hardware
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Mr Kashif Sharif Research Assistant Area of Research: RFID Security [email protected]
Mr Aleem paracha Research Assistant Area of Research: Remote metering [email protected]
Mr Manzoor Ahmed Research Assistant Area of Research: Reducing Channel zapping delay in IPTV [email protected]
Students Imad‐ud‐Din (MSIT‐7) :working on End to End packet Dynamics Abid Hussain (MSIT‐8) :working on Wireless Security Azfar (MSIT‐8) :working on RFID Security Nauman (MSIS):working on RFID Security Bilal Majid (BICSE‐3):Working on Disaster management Zuhaib Naseer (BICSE‐3): Working on Disaster management
Publications
Francisco Rodríguez‐Henríquez, Guillermo Morales‐Luna, Nazar A. Saqib and Nareli Cruz‐Cortés, "A Parallel Version of the ItohTsujii Multiplicative Inversion Algorithm", International Workshop on Applied Reconfigurable Computing ARC 2007, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Río de Janeiro, Brazil 2007
Organization of Conferences and Workshops Mr. Jahangir Khan , Whizz Silicon Inc, USA
o Topic: Trends and Technologies in high speed communication o Dated: Nov 25, 2008
Dr. Peter Palensky, University of Pretoria, South Africa
o Topic: “"Application of industrial informatics to electrical energy networks” o Dated: Dec 15, 2008
Dr. Zia Khan, Synopsys USA
o Topic: ‘The Role of EDA in Chip Design’ o Dated: Dec 20, 2008
Associated Lab Centre of Excellence for FPGAs/ASIC Research (CEFAR)
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Hardware
W2012 100MHz Oscilloscope GW Instek (model GLA1132) Spartan‐3 Starter Kit 2x Virtex‐4 (ML‐401)Evaluation
Platform KIT 2x Virtex‐4 (ML‐403)Evaluation
Platform KIT Xilinx Virtex‐II Evaluation board 4x Xess Xstend KIT 8x Xess XSA‐200 Board 2x Xess XSA‐3S1000 Board 8x Nextek Trainig Kit 200k FROM‐II 1553 Bus Cable
PCMCIA 1553 card 4x MIL‐STD‐1553 Bus Coupler Proto Type Board 1553 Interface card 1553 1553 Transformer GPRS Modem GARMIN 10x kit 2x Micro‐controller Based Trainer 2x Digital Multimeter IC programmer RFID reader
Software
Simulation: ModelSim XE III v6.3c Simulation: ModelSim XE III v6.2g Synthesis: ISE Design Suite 8.2 Synthesis: Xilinx ISE v9.1i Synthesis: ISE Design Suite 10.1
Chip Scope pro 9.2i Accelware DSP IP Tool kits Plan Ahead™ Design Analysis Tool PCB Design: OrCAD 9.2
Research Projects International Collaboration
a.) Design and Verification of LowPower, HighSpeed IP Suite for Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0)
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is used to connect all sorts of devices and is the most successful computer standard in history with billions of units shipped. Current solutions, based on USB 2.0, support transfer rates up to 480 Mb/s but that rate will soon increase tenfold to 4.8Gb/s with the introduction of USB 3.0 enabled products. It has been planned to develop a suite of low power, configurable and high speed USB 3.0 IP cores including IPs for USB 3.0 host controller, USB 3.0 device controller and USB 3.0 support functions to meet the needs of this "poised‐to‐explode" market. (Proposal submitted for funding)
National Collaboration/ Indigenous at CEFAR
a.) Remote Metering (proposed project with SNGPL) The old gas meter has a very simple mechanical system that consists of few gears, some rubber tubes and some plastic made hands that move like a cycle to move the gears when gas passes through. For the automated gas reading mechanism we need a system that should give as digital reading on the gas meter, showing how much gas
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is used at the end of the month. We suggest an automated meter reading at a centralized location and fool proof from any kind of tampering. b.) A Programmable Multichannel BEU (Bulk Encryption Unit) in FPGAs BEU is a product that is used for encrypting more than one communication channel simultaneously. The objective of BEU(Bulk Encryption Unit) is to design a customized secure communication solution for government, military and civil applications. BEU is a holistic solution which includes cryptographic algorithm design, key management, access control ,tamper proofing customers’ requirement, support of encrypting 4 communication channel at least and to break monopoly of existing vendors by providing customer access to change encryption algorithm. This product has applications in both the government as well as public sectors.
Past Projects
a. GSM Interceptor It has been proposed to design and develop a GSM monitoring system which can be widely used by security agencies for monitoring and surveillance of subversive activities. A GSM Monitoring System is comprised of a GSM Receiver and a Deciphering Unit for real time deciphering of A5/1 or A5/2 algorithms. The real issue in developing GSM Monitoring System is instant breaking of A5/1 and A5/2 algorithms. However, technologies to break such algorithms are not readily available in open market and foreign commercial implementations are extremely expensive (in the order of hundreds of thousands USD per unit). The major focus of this research project is to develop a system to decipher A5/1 and A5/2 GSM communication. b. A Microcontroller based GPRS Enabled RFID System Many Applications require wireless communication between RFID Reader and Backend Computer System, However applications currently in use are using Wired Communication between RFID Reader and Backend Computer System. So this project solves two things: A product which Receives data from RFID Reader, Operates a Mobile Device Sends data to backend System through Mobile Device. A software utility which receives data from Mobile Device Stores the Data in to Database.
Projects with the Industry A Programmable Multichannel BEU (Bulk Encryption Unit) in FPGAs. Design and Verification of Low‐Power, High‐Speed IP Suite for Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0)
Contracts and Grants Obtained: Rs. 1.983 Million (NUST Seed Money) for a Project “A Programmable Multichannel BEU (Bulk Encryption Unit) in FPGAs”
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Vision Imaging & Signal Processing Research Group VISPro Theme VISPro aims at innovative and leading research and development projects in the fields of Vision, Imaging and Digital Signal Processing Application domain Computer/Machine Vision Digital Image & Signal Processing Digital system design for algorithms Group Members Dr. Rehan Hafiz PhD (EE) Vision/Image Processing, Algorithms 0331‐5189556, [email protected]
Dr. Junaid Qadir (Broadcast/Network Technologies) Dr. Zia‐ul‐Qayyum (Artificial Intelligence) Mr. Habeel Ahmed (Controls) Mr. Muhammad Bilal (Computerized Tomography) Mr. Kamran Hussain Zaidi (Communication Systems) Mr. Nasir Mahmood Mr. Owais Ahmed Malik (Neural Networks, Algorithms) Mr. Imran Khan (Image Processing & Computer Vision) Publications R. Hafiz and K. B. Ozanyan, “Optical absorption measurements in particle‐containing ambients using gated ratiometric detection." IEEE Sensors Journal, (2008)
R.Hafiz and K.B. Ozanyan, “Demodulation using Digitally Balanced Detection”, IEEE Sensors 2008 conference, Italy.
R. Hafiz and K. B. Ozanyan, “Digitally balanced detection for optical tomography." American institute of physics, Review of Scientific Instruments, Volume 78, Issue 10, pp. 103101‐103101‐9 (2007)
R. Hafiz and K. B. Ozanyan, “Digital Balanced Detection for Fast Optical CT in Fluidised Beds”. World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography (2007)
Associated Lab Embedded Systems Research Lab / VISPro LAB
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Research Projects 1) International Collaboration
a. MANU Project in collaboration with Techionics USA i. Theme: An innovative research effort for tracking objects for digital entertainment industry.
ii. Students: Mohammad Abbas, Juzer Abbas (BICSE3) iii. Dr. Rehan Hafiz, Dr. Junaid Qadir, Imran Khan, Mr. Maajid Maqbool
2) Project on proposal submitted to ICT R&D Fund a. Multi‐View Imaging
i. Theme: Panoramic view generation for Multi‐View imaging & View interpolation for Multi‐View Imaging
ii. ICT proposal submitted in collaboration with Epic Technologies. Status: Under Review
iii. Multi View Imaging (MVI) systems are finding increased usage in a wide range of next generation multimedia applications. Rather than recording a single video from a single view; MVI systems rely on acquiring multiple videos of the same object from multiple views (angles). This increased visual information of the object being filmed can then be used to achieve interesting results, such as “Immersive TV applications”. The research aims to investigate panoramic view generation and view interpolation for generation of "wide angle views" and "free view point TV" to immerse the viewer into the multimedia contents.
iv. Students: Ahmed Talha, Muhammed Usman, Najeeb (BEE‐2) v. Dr. Rehan Hafiz, Mr Owais Malik
3) Other Projects/FYPs a. Aautomated vehicle number plate tracking system for traffic control
i. In this project a system will be designed that responds to the event of a vehicle breaking a red light at a traffic junction. The system will be capable of recording the violator’s license Plate number in the centralized data base.
ii. Students: Asra Masood, Ayesha Mushtaq, Damiya Aamir (BEE‐2) iii. Dr. Rehan Hafiz, Miss Samin Khaliq
b. C‐ART i. “Computer controlled 2 Axis vector gRaphic painTing system” (C‐ART) is a proposed system that is capable of translating images on a computer to physical images on any real surface or a canvas.
ii. Ashar Rasul, Ahmed Raza, Ansar Moughis‐ Ud‐Din (BEE‐2) iii. Mr. Syed Kamran Zaidi and Dr. Rehan Hafiz
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c. Computerized Tomography i. Development of a test‐bed for Computerized tomography that will provide a primary platform for analyzing image reconstruction techniques for both hard‐field and soft field tomography.
ii. Students: Asim Rehman, Hassan Nasir (BEE‐2) iii. Mr. Muhammad Bilal, Dr. Rehan Hafiz
d. Automated fire notification and control system i. Students: Salman Ahmed Saad Ahmed (BEE‐2) ii. Mr. Habeel Ahmed and Dr. Rehan Hafiz
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Data Engineering for Large Scale Applications (DELSA) Research Group Theme Extracting and integrating data among autonomous, distributed, heterogeneous data sources
Objective DELSA research group explores heterogeneity especially semantic heterogeneity in data sources, and interoperable systems in scientific and business domains. The group aims at broadening the focus of data engineering techniques beyond their traditional scope. Application Domain The DELSA research group focuses on semantic heterogeneity in integrating autonomous, distributed and heterogeneous data sources in business, academia, health, agriculture, and biomedicine. Moreover the group has interest in data warehousing, view materialization, OLAP, multiple query optimization, semantic Web, ontology engineering and E‐technologies. Group Members
Dr. Sharifullah Khan, Associate Professor PhD Specialization: Databases, Query Processing and Data Integration [email protected] 051‐90852153
Dr. Khalid Latif, Assistant Professor PhD Specialization: Semantic Web, Ontology Engineering, Information Retrieval [email protected] 051‐90852173
Dr. Zia Qayyum, Assistant Professor PhD Specialization: Knowledge Management, Artificial Intelligence [email protected] 051‐90852173
Mr. Owais Malik, Assistant Professor MS Specialization: Knowledge Management, Artificial Intelligence [email protected] 051‐90852159
Mr. Aatif Kamal, Assistant Professor MS (IT) Specialization: Distributed Computing, P2P Systems and Databases [email protected]
Mr. Muhammad Bilal, Lecturer MS(IT) Relevant Source Selection in Data Integration System [email protected]
Mr. Azhar Maqsood, Assistant Professor MS (IT),Databases and Data Mining [email protected]
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Mr. Waris Ali PhD Student Query Expansion in Data Integration System [email protected]
Ms. Ammara Aslam MS (IT) Student Query Rewriting in Data Integration System [email protected]
Mr. Iqbal Qasim MS (IT) Student Ontology Mapping Mapping Generation between different Ontologies [email protected]
Mr. Asad Masood MS (IT) Student Crawler for Information Retrieval System [email protected]
Mr. Nabeel Ahmed Awan MS (IT) Student Crawler for Information Retrieval System [email protected]
Ms. Irum Fatima MS (IT) Student Semantic Annotation [email protected]
Mr. Muhammad Sufyan MS (IT) Student Bridging Heterogeneous Ontologies [email protected]
Ms Anila Sahar Butt MS (IT) Student Main Memory Object Oriented Ontology Management Systems [email protected]
Yasir khan MS (IT) Student Structured Information Extraction [email protected]
Wajahat Ali Khan MS (IT) Student Semantic Process Interoperability HL7 v3 [email protected]
Sauleha Javed Durrani Main Memory Object Oriented Ontology Management Systems [email protected]
Umar Hyat Khan MS(IT) Student Ontology Driven Recommender Systems [email protected]
Muhammad Mudassar MS (IT) Student Ontology Driven Recommender Systems [email protected]
Associated Labs Data Engineering Research Lab
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Research Projects
1. Integrating Data Sources on the Internet: Hundreds of data sources are publicly available on the Internet. These data sources maintain closely related data, but the decentralized, autonomous and heterogeneous nature of the data have made very difficult its accessibility and integration by scientists for innovative synthesis. A real challenge is to locate and select relevant and quality data and to integrate them. The project is concerned with locating and selecting sources that are relevant to the given user query and integrating them to answer the query. Its salient feature is quality‐driven semantic similarity matching. The similarity between the user query and data sources is acquired through the domain ontology and source models. In this research domain, currently we work on the following main themes:
a) Ontology Reasoning in Query Expansion b) Ontology‐driven Query Rewriting c) Mapping Source Descriptions into Domain Ontology d) Generation and Storage of Context Aware Metadata for Digital Documents e) Semantic Indexing of Data Sources and Digital Documents f) Extending mediation architecture to P2P data integration architecture g) Intelligent Indexing in P2P Data Integration
2. DynamOnt Collaborative Ontology Development: Common understanding is a decisive factor in the collaboration of distributed knowledge communities. A systematic approach to gain this common understanding is the dynamic creation of ontologies, leading to a more efficient use of shared information resources. At present, the creation of high‐quality ontologies is a very time consuming and expensive task. Therefore, such ontologies are available only for few thematic fields. What is still missing is a methodology supported by tools, which would enable domain experts (who are not ontology building experts) to create ontologies on the fly, yet based on sound principles, created in short time. "Dynamic" means that these ontologies can then be extended and refined over time, can evolve to become more axiomatised, and can be personalised and localised by individuals or groups without losing touch with the community's preferred interpretation.
International Collaboration
Project: DynamOnt, Institute of Software Technology, Vienna University of Technology, Wien, AUSTRIA.
Project: Grid GenoMedicine (GGM), Institute de Researche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT), Universite Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France.
Project: Health EChild, University of West England (UWE), Bristol, UK.
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Publications
Khalid Latif and Rudolf Mayer. Sky‐Metaphor Visualisation for Self‐Organising Maps. In Proceedings 7th International Conference on Knowledge Management (I‐KNOW), Graz, Austria, September 2007.
Khalid Latif, Edgar Weippl and A Min Tjoa. Question Driven Semantics Interpretation for Collaborative Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Reuse. In Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IRI), Las Vegas, USA, August 2007.
Shuaib Karim, Khalid Latif, and A Min Tjoa. Providing Universal Accessibility using Connecting Ontologies: A Holistic Approach. In Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction (HCII), vol. 4556 of LNCS, Beijing, China, July 2007. Springer.
S. Khan. Data Acquisition from Semantically Heterogeneous Data Sources, In the proceedings of the Workshop Data Warehousing and Data Mining, Islamabad, Pakistan, February 2007.
W. Ali and S. Khan. Global Query Generation over Diverse Data Sources Using Ontology. In the proceedings of First national conference on Information and Communication Technologies (NCICT 2007), Bannu, Pakistan, June 9, 2007.
K. Sonia and S. Khan. Building Local Ontology from Database Relations in Data Integration. In the proceedings of IEEE 3rd international conference on Emerging Technology (ICET 2007), November 12‐13, 2007. Islamabad, Pakistan.
M. Bilal and S. Khan. OntologyDriven Relevance Reasoning in Data Integration Techniques. In the proceedings of 5th international workshop on the Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT 2007), Islamabad, Pakistan, December 17‐18, 2007.
J. Mustafa, S. Khan and K. Latif. Intelligent Informational Retrieval. In Proceedings of 1st National Conference on Security, Computing, & Communication, May 2008, Kohat, NWFP, Pakistan.
K. Sonia and S. Khan. Transforming Relational Model to Source Ontology for Data Integration. In Proceedings of 4th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Systems (IS'08), September 2008, Bulgaria.
J. Mustafa, S. Khan and K. Latif. Ontology Based Semantic Information Retrieval. In Proceedings of 4th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Systems (IS'08), September 2008, Bulgaria.
M. Bilal and S. Khan. Ontology Driven Relevance Reasoning Architecture for Data Integration Techniques. In Proceedings of 4th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Systems (IS'08), September 2008, Bulgaria.
K. Sonia and S. Khan. R2O Transformation System: Relation to Ontology Transformation for Scalable Data Integration. In Proceedings of the 12th International Database Engineering & Applications Symposium (IDEAS'08), Pages: 291‐295 September 2008, Coimbra, Portugal.
J. Mustafa, S. Khan and K. Latif, “Intelligent Informational Retrieval”. In Proceedings of 1st National Conference on Security, Computing, & Communication, May 2008, Kohat, NWFP, Pakistan
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A.M. Khattak, K. Latif, S. Khan and N. Ahmed, “Ontology Recovery and Visualization”, In the proceedings of 4th International Conference on Next Generation Web Services and Practices, Korea October 2008.
I. Qasim, S. Khan and K. Latif, “Semantic Mapping between Global and Source Ontologies for Scalable Data Integration System”, In the proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies (ICICT), Bannu 2008.
A. Aslam and S. Khan, “Semantic Based Query Rewriting in Data Integration”, In the proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies (ICICT), Bannu 2008.
A.M. Khattak, K. Latif, S. Khan and N. Ahmed, “Managing Change History in Web Ontologies”, In the proceedings of 4th International Conference on Semantic, Knowledge and Grid, Beijing, December 2008.
W. Ali and S. Khan, “Ontology Driven Query Expansion in Data Integration”, In the proceedings of 4th International Conference on Semantic, Knowledge and Grid, Beijing, December 2008.
N. Ahmed, S. Khan, K. Latif and A. M. Khattak, “Extracting Semantic Annotation and their Correlation with Document”, In the proceedings of 4th IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies, Rawalpindi, October 2008.
A. Aslam, S. Khan and K. Latif, “Semantic Based Query Rewriting in Distributed Systems”, In the proceedings of 4th IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies, Rawalpindi, October 2008.
A. Latif, M. Y. Javed, S. Khan, “Semi‐Automated Approach for Converting ERD to Semi‐Star Schema”, In the proceedings of 4th IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies, Rawalpindi, October 2008.
A.M. Khattak, J. Mustafa, N. Ahmed, K. Latif and S. Khan, “Intelligent Search in Digital Documents”, In the proceedings of 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence, December 2008.
M. Safyan and S. Khan; “Bridging Hierarchical Ontologies for Interoperability and Query Reformulation”, In the proceedings of 2008 International Conference on Advanced Computer Theory and Engineering (ICACTE 2008), Phuket Island, Thailand, December 2008.
M. A. Owais, M. A. Ahmed, “Dynamic Similarity Metric Using Fuzzy Predicates for Case‐Based Planning”. International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge‐based Systems. Accepted in Sept. 2008.
Past Projects 1. Ontologydriven Relevance Reasoning for Source Selection in Data Integration: Data sources are integrated for knowledge discovery. Online data sources join and leave integration systems arbitrarily because they are autonomous. All available data sources may not contribute to a user query result necessarily. Therefore, executing a user query against all the data sources consumes resources and makes the query expensive. Relevant data sources should be selected through relevance reasoning. Existing techniques take comparatively more time in relevance reasoning as the number of sources increase and lack semantics to sort out fine‐grained semantic heterogeneities. This project extends these techniques by including (a): bitmap index for efficient reasoning and (b): semantics to sort out
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fine‐grained semantic heterogeneities. This improves query response time as well as precision and recall of the integration systems. (Completed in 2008) 2. Transforming Database Relations to Source Ontology in Data Integration: Scalable and flexible data integration of autonomous and distributed data sources requires to represent the sources’ descriptions into a conceptual model i.e., ontology to make the sources interoperable. Sources’ metadata are either incomplete or not available. The essential metadata of the sources can be extracted from the database relations. Extracting the metadata from database relations and transforming them into source ontology is tedious and error prone task. The contribution of this project is a methodology for: (a) extracting metadata from source relations, and (b) transforming the extracted metadata to ontology. The evaluation shows the transformation is total and injective. Consequently, it is information capacity preserving. (Completed in 2008) 3. Semantic Driven Information Retrieval in Digital Documents: Retrieving required information in digital documents is difficult due to semantic heterogeneity. Keyword–based Semantic similarity helps in handling the issue by improving the recall of the information; however, it cannot improve the precision of the information. In order to improve the precision, we adopt thematic semantic similarity approach for information retrieval. RDF triples are employed instead of keywords in maintaining sources metadata and formulating user queries for capturing the context of the keywords. This improves the information precision. (Completed in 2008) 4. Ontologydriven Query Expansion: Semantic queries are generated with the support of a semantic model (i.e. domain ontology) through utilizing relationships between the existing concepts in data sources. This research expands the user given queries by through hierarchical relationships in ontology to transform them into semantic queries. They provide transparent access to data sources. It is evident from the evaluation of results that recall is improved. Hence information loss is minimized. (Completed in 2007)
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Semantic Systems Research Group SSRG
Theme To carry out research in semantic based system in the areas of Web Application Security, Health Systems Interoperability. The group has interest in high performance computing and storage systems as well. Objectives Prepare students for conducting research in a way to apply in real environment. Application Domain Semantics in health informatics DTS Web Application Security Grid Computing
Group Members
Dr. Hafiz Farooq Ahmad Associate Professor
Sarmad Sadiq PhD Student
Mr. Muhammad Afzal MS (IT) Student HL7 Based Healthcare Laboratory Messages Interoperability Solution (HLHLMIS) [email protected]
Mr. Maqbool Hussain MS (IT) Student Web Service based HL7 Solution for Healthcare Laboratory Domain [email protected]
Shagufta Umer MS (IT) Student Dynamic Mapping Solution of HL7 Version 3 to Database [email protected]
Somia Razzaq MS (IT) Student Designing Framework based on HL7 Web Service Security Profile [email protected]
Mehtab Alam Khurshid MS (IT) Student Service Oriented Architecture for HL7 Version 3 [email protected]
Wajahat Ali Khan MS (IT) Student HL7 Process Interoperability Solution through ontologies [email protected]
Yasir Mehmood MS(Software Engineering) Student Analysis and Extension of HL7 Java SIG API [email protected]
Sidra Aftab MS(IT) Student IHE Framework Proposition to HL7 Laboratory Domain [email protected]
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Abdul Razzaq MS (IT) Student Web Application Security Design and development of Ontology based solution for Web Application attacks [email protected]
Muhammad Ali Hur MS (IT) Student Web Application Security Development and designing the System Architecture to provide the semantic solution for Web Security [email protected]
Nasir Haider MS (IT) Student Positive Security Model (white list approach) for Web Security [email protected]
Muddassar Masood MS (IT) Student Ontology design for application layer attacks [email protected]
Muzzamil Noor MS (IT) Student Deployment issues related to Web Security gateway
Intikhab, Huma, Nauvera, Sana BS (SE) Student (MCS) Automatic Rule Generation using Ontology for Application level Intrusion Detection System [email protected]
Fauzia Naureen MS(IT) Student Ethical hacking for vulnerabilities analysis of Web application [email protected]
Publications Muhammad Afzal, Maqbool Hussain, Hafiz Farooq Ahmad and Arshad Ali “Design and Implementation of Open Source HL7 Version 3 for e‐Health Services”, Proceedings of 9th International HL7 Interoperability Conference (IHIC), 2008, Greece.
Maqbool Hussain, Muhammad Afzal, Arshad Ali, Hafiz Farooq Ahmad and Naeem Khalid “Healthcare Applications Interoperability through Implementation of HL7 Web Service Basic Profile” 6th ITNG Conference, USA.
Abdul Razzaq, Ali Hur, Nasir Haider, Hafiz Farooq Ahmad “Context Based Application Level Intrusion Detection System by using Bayesian Filter”, 5th International Symposium on High Capacity Optical Network & Enabling Technologies(HONET), 2008. Malaysia.
Abdul Razzaq, Ali Hur, Hafiz Farooq Ahmad, Nasir Haider “Ontology Based Application Level Intrusion Detection System by using Bayesian Filter” 6th ITNG Conference, USA. (Accepted)
Associated Labs DTS Lab
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Research Projects International Collaboration
Current projects
a.) Health Life Horizon: Design and Implementation of Open Source HL7 System for EHealth Services
Introduction To carry out research in health information systems by designing and developing open source software systems as provision of concept of HL7 Version 3 in order to achieve semantic interoperability. The purpose is to train human resource and coordinate health informatics professionals in Pakistan to connect with international community. Members
Dr. Hafiz Farooq Ahmad (PI) Dr. Arshad Ali (Co‐PI) Mr. Majid Maqbool (Business Coordinator) Mr. Naeem Khalid (Research&Development Coordinator) Mr. Maqbool Hussain (Team Lead) Mr. Muhammad Afzal (Team Lead) Mr. Bilal Rizvi (Qaulity Assurance Engineer) Ms. Shagufta Umer Ms. Somia Razzaq Ms. Mehtab Alam Khurshid Mr. Wajahat Ali Khan Mr. Yasir Mehmood Ms. Sidra Aftab
Problem Statement Semantic interoperability is a big challenge for healthcare information systems to integrate their data. Health Level Seven (HL7) is the world most accepted and leading standard which aims to resolve message exchanging and interoperability issue of healthcare information systems. Motivation In the information age, communities are reshaping themselves to be knowledge based societies. Information technology is playing key role in this dynamic transitional period for health related services. It is one of the most important
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disciplines that have great capacity to exploit information technology in its different domains like patient administration, laboratory, pharmacy, etc. Computerized Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) has been developed to process and manage data within the boundaries of an organization, hospital or clinical laboratory. But that is not the end. World is becoming a global village where every industry (including healthcare) needs to make their information systems interoperable with each other in order to exchange and share the data. A number of adhoc ways have been used e.g. telephonic, mailing, emailing or messenger services to achieve the interoperability job. But problems with all of these methods are inefficiency, inconsistency and chances of errors. According to a study made in 2005, “every year at least 98,000 Americans die and millions more are injured as a result of medical errors”. This is the situation of a developed country. The situation of developing countries like Pakistan is even worse, but we never know exact human losses. The experts proposed solution to this problem is to bring standards into the health‐information exchange. According to another study, “standardized information exchange would save the US nation $86.8 Billion each year”. It was the motivating factor for some volunteers in US to lay foundation for an organization namely Health Level Seven (HL7). To serve the community to its best, it is needed to provide HL7 version 3 solution that will not only be cost‐effective but also in the reach of whole community. Progress and Results The intention of Health Life Horizon Project is to develop an open source tool to facilitate healthcare organization in deploying HL7 V3 compliant interfaces for their required messages. The tool will include HL7 V3 message parsing/generation component, V2 to V3 convertor component, generic database mapping component and transportation component. It is currently in inception phase and initially we are interested to develop HL7 based open source system just for laboratory domain by automating their messages like test orders and test results shared among branches of a single lab or cross labs. The architecture has been proposed and is provided as following:
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Figure 1: Proposed Architecture for HLH system
i. Future Directions and Conclusion
HL7 V3 has achieved semantic interoperability using conventional concepts definition for different vocabularies. We aim to provide the community with semantic‐based HL7 solution using ontologies: a true semantics. Another important future direction of this project is the integration of SOA to HL7. We envision that our system will get global recognition in terms of cost‐effectiveness, world first semantic HL7 solution using ontology for the vocabularies and service orientated HL7. b.) A paradigm Shift in Web Application Security
Introduction The aim of this project is to provide an effective and open source semantic based intrusion detection system at application layer of OSI model. Application layer is more exposed and prone to attacks. The exponentially increasing cyber threats with the expansion of Web applications have become the biggest security concern for e‐business and information sharing communities. Existing security mechanisms are ineffective to provide complete security solution. The proposed
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intelligent intrusion detection system (IDS), base on ontology that can be refined and expanded over time. System semantically analyzes the payload to understand the contextual nature of attack and is capable of detecting complex and zero day Web application attacks that easily eludes packet level inspection. The system is efficient by analyzing the specified portion of http request where attack is possible and thus provides significant search space reduction with low false positive rate. The System also generates the rules automatically through inference upon attack vector (input) and knowledge base.
Members • Dr. Hafiz Farooq Ahmad (PI) • Dr. Fuzan Mirza (Co‐PI) • Abdul Razzaq (Team Lead) • Ali Hur (Team Lead) • Mr.Nasir Haider • Mr. Muddassar Masood • Mr. Mazzamil Noor • Ms. Fauzia Naureen • Mr. Intikhab • Ms. Sana • Ms. Nauvera • Ms. Huma
Problem Statement Semantic based Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a biggest challenge and need of the day for e‐business and Defense based organizations to keep the secret information away from the hackers reach. An Intelligent mechanism is required to analyze the user input semantically for understanding the context of input. Ontology base IDS is novel and unique idea, no such commercial product yet available globally.
Motivation A security assessment by the Application Defense Center, which included more than 250 Web applications from e‐commerce, online banking, enterprise collaboration, and supply chain management sites, concluded that at least 92% of Web applications are vulnerable to some form of attack. Another survey found that about 75% of all attacks against Web servers target Web‐based applications. Web application attacks especially SQL injection and cross‐site scripting are two of the most common security vulnerabilities that plague web applications nowadays. On April 24, 2008 hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Web Servers hacked, including several at the United Nations and in the U.K. government through exploitation the vulnerabilities of IIS. According to The National Vulnerability
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Database (NVD) there are over 18,500 vulnerabilities in the web based applications which include 2,147 cross‐site scripting (XSS), 2,757 buffer overflow and 1,600 SQL injection vulnerabilities. There is a need to design and implement a semantic base Intrusion Detection System which can mitigate the application layer attacks effectively and efficiently. The System is ontology‐based that understand the contextual nature of payload of http request. Ontology base IDS is novel and unique idea, no such commercial product yet available globally. System also automatically generates the rules for effective defense against application attacks by developing the semantic rule engine. Progress and Results The purpose of Paradigm Shift in Web Application Security Project is to develop an open source tool to facilitate e‐business and information sharing communities for securing their resources. The prototype of the system has been implemented and evaluated by using the Paros tool. The results obtained were highly encouraging and almost detect the 99% web application attacks. The architecture has been proposed as shown in fig 1.
Figure 1: System Architecture
System having following components:‐ 1. Http Extractor 2. Http Parser 3. Cache Controller 4. Analyzer 5. Rule Engine 6. Knowledge base 7. Inference Engine 8. Ontology Manager
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9. Admin Console 10. Logging Module
Future Directions and Conclusion
• Expanding the Scope of System to detect more classes of attacks. • White list approach can be used to improve the default allow approach for
web applications to reduce attack threats significantly. • Use of Forensics techniques to detect the locations of hackers.
Contracts and Grants obtained We have obtained funds for the Health Life Horizon Project from ICT R&D Fund Pakistan of the mass Rs. 14.42 million.
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PTCL, NUST Center of Excellence for IP Technologies
The Center of Excellence for IP Technologies, jointly managed by PTCL, NUST and Cisco Systems in collaboration, is currently operational at the NUST campus in Islamabad. The center brings to one forum the expertise of global networking market leader Cisco, the top ranked Pakistani engineering university, NUST (ranked 376 world‐wide in the THES university ranking), and the biggest telecom service provider in Pakistan, PTCL. The center aims to strengthen industry‐academia linkages and promote international collaboration, and has broadly two goals: o To provide a world‐class research and development (R&D) facility where Pakistani
researchers will work, in collaboration with Cisco and PTCL engineers, on significant contemporary IP technology problems;
o To provide a diagnostic and training facility to PTCL and Cisco, in particular, and to
the local networking industry in general. While the research workforce for the center will be provided by NUST, the thematic directions of research areas would be decided by NUST, PTCL and Cisco in collaboration. By involving the leading market vendor (Cisco), and leading national telecom service providers (PTCL), the center of excellence is well‐positioned to tackle significant IP technology problems and to create new products/ services. Activities a) The center organized an ``IP technology networking workshop'' that was jointly conducted by NUST‐SEECS, Islamabad, and KICS‐UET, Lahore. The workshop, funded by National ICT R&D fund, was successful in getting local researchers, active in the area of IP technology, to brainstorm and develop abstract future research proposals. The following areas were identified during the workshop as future core research areas for the center:
o Network security o Next generation networks o Routing and switching issues o Network performance evaluation
b) A virtual online forum gathering together Pakistani researchers active in the area of IP technology research was created for the ``IP technology workshop''. The yahoogroup serves as an interface between researchers active in our subject area, and can be accessed at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/pak‐ip‐technology/.
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Current Projects: 1) Context‐aware IPTV services 2) Routing in cognitive radio networks Group Members: Dr Junaid Qadir Dr Adeel Baig Dr Anjum Naveed
Research Students: Muhammad Usman, Nabeel ur Rehman, Muhammad Zeeshan
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Research Group for Off Grid Energy ResourcingROGER Theme Creation of off grid energy resources for alternative energy production Application domain Solar energy research Fuel cells Power load management and solutions
Group Members Mr. Habeel Ahmad +92‐51‐9241800, +92‐334‐5147601, [email protected] Mr. Saleem Iftikhar Mr. Abrar Mohammad Butt Shama Rehman
Other members involved in group projects: Dr. Richard Wills (University of Southampton, UK) Mr. Majid Maqbool Mr. Ruhullah Khan
Associated Labs
Control Systems Lab Nanotechnology Research Lab
Research Projects
I. International Collaboration Rankin Engine Based Power Generator Theme: An endeavor to utilize alternative energy resources for electricity generation for light load applications. Saleem Iftikhar, Habeel Ahmad, Abrar M Butt, Majid Maqbool
II. Other projects/FYPs Development of Nano‐Photocatalysts for photo‐splitting of water Production of clean fuels being the main objective through this technique. Ruhullah Khan, Shama Rehman, Abrar M Butt
Optimization of efficiency of solar cells Students: Waseem Arshad and Haris Zafar Ruhullah Khan, Abrar M Butt
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Development of control system for solar reflectors The project aims to design a system for optimizing the efficiency of solar heating lenses through electronic control and positioning as a function of incident radiation. Students: M. Azfar K. Durrani, Utaiba Q. Dar Mr. Habeel Ahmad, Mr. Saleem Iftikhar, Abrar M Butt