Magdy Bayoumi

Fudong Lin, Summer Crawford, Kaleb Guillot et al.

Precise crop yield prediction provides valuable information for agricultural planning and decision-making processes. However, timely predicting crop yields remains challenging as crop growth is sensitive to growing season weather variation and climate change. In this work, we develop a deep learning-based solution, namely Multi-Modal Spatial-Temporal Vision Transformer (MMST-ViT), for predicting crop yields at the county level across the United States, by considering the effects of short-term meteorological variations during the growing season and the long-term climate change on crops. Specifically, our MMST-ViT consists of a Multi-Modal Transformer, a Spatial Transformer, and a Temporal Transformer. The Multi-Modal Transformer leverages both visual remote sensing data and short-term meteorological data for modeling the effect of growing season weather variations on crop growth. The Spatial Transformer learns the high-resolution spatial dependency among counties for accurate agricultural tracking. The Temporal Transformer captures the long-range temporal dependency for learning the impact of long-term climate change on crops. Meanwhile, we also devise a novel multi-modal contrastive learning technique to pre-train our model without extensive human supervision. Hence, our MMST-ViT captures the impacts of both short-term weather variations and long-term climate change on crops by leveraging both satellite images and meteorological data. We have conducted extensive experiments on over 200 counties in the United States, with the experimental results exhibiting that our MMST-ViT outperforms its counterparts under three performance metrics of interest.

Nelly Elsayed, Zag ElSayed, Navid Asadizanjani et al.

Understanding human behavior and monitoring mental health are essential to maintaining the community and society's safety. As there has been an increase in mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic due to uncontrolled mental health, early detection of mental issues is crucial. Nowadays, the usage of Intelligent Virtual Personal Assistants (IVA) has increased worldwide. Individuals use their voices to control these devices to fulfill requests and acquire different services. This paper proposes a novel deep learning model based on the gated recurrent neural network and convolution neural network to understand human emotion from speech to improve their IVA services and monitor their mental health.

Victor Adewopo, Nelly Elsayed, Zag ElSayed et al.

Action detection and public traffic safety are crucial aspects of a safe community and a better society. Monitoring traffic flows in a smart city using different surveillance cameras can play a significant role in recognizing accidents and alerting first responders. The utilization of action recognition (AR) in computer vision tasks has contributed towards high-precision applications in video surveillance, medical imaging, and digital signal processing. This paper presents an intensive review focusing on action recognition in accident detection and autonomous transportation systems for a smart city. In this paper, we focused on AR systems that used diverse sources of traffic video capturing, such as static surveillance cameras on traffic intersections, highway monitoring cameras, drone cameras, and dash-cams. Through this review, we identified the primary techniques, taxonomies, and algorithms used in AR for autonomous transportation and accident detection. We also examined data sets utilized in the AR tasks, identifying the main sources of datasets and features of the datasets. This paper provides potential research direction to develop and integrate accident detection systems for autonomous cars and public traffic safety systems by alerting emergency personnel and law enforcement in the event of road accidents to minimize human error in accident reporting and provide a spontaneous response to victims

Nelly Elsayed, Zag ElSayed, Magdy Bayoumi

The rapid progress in technology innovation usage and distribution has increased in the last decade. The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) systems worldwide has increased network security challenges created by malicious third parties. Thus, reliable intrusion detection and network forensics systems that consider security concerns and IoT systems limitations are essential to protect such systems. IoT botnet attacks are one of the significant threats to enterprises and individuals. Thus, this paper proposed an economic deep learning-based model for detecting IoT botnet attacks along with different types of attacks. The proposed model achieved higher accuracy than the state-of-the-art detection models using a smaller implementation budget and accelerating the training and detecting processes.

Zag ElSayed, Murat Ozer, Nelly Elsayed et al.

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) has great potential for solving many brain signal analysis limitations, mental disorder resolutions, and restoring missing limb functionality via neural-controlled implants. However, there is no single available, and safe implant for daily life usage exists yet. Most of the proposed implants have several implementation issues, such as infection hazards and heat dissipation, which limits their usability and makes it more challenging to pass regulations and quality control production. The wireless implant does not require a chronic wound in the skull. However, the current complex clustering neuron identification algorithms inside the implant chip consume a lot of power and bandwidth, causing higher heat dissipation issues and draining the implant's battery. The spike sorting is the core unit of an invasive BCI chip, which plays a significant role in power consumption, accuracy, and area. Therefore, in this study, we propose a low-power adaptive simplified VLSI architecture, "Zydeco-Style," for BCI spike sorting that is computationally less complex with higher accuracy that performs up to 93.5% in the worst-case scenario. The architecture uses a low-power Bluetooth Wireless communication module with external IoT medical ICU devices. The proposed architecture was implemented and simulated in Verilog. In addition, we are proposing an implant conceptual design.

Victor Adewopo, Nelly Elsayed, Zag Elsayed et al.

In the dynamic urban landscape, where the interplay of vehicles and pedestrians defines the rhythm of life, integrating advanced technology for safety and efficiency is increasingly crucial. This study delves into the application of cutting-edge technological methods in smart cities, focusing on enhancing public safety through improved traffic accident detection. Action recognition plays a pivotal role in interpreting visual data and tracking object motion such as human pose estimation in video sequences. The challenges of action recognition include variability in rapid actions, limited dataset, and environmental factors such as (Weather, Illumination, and Occlusions). In this paper, we present a novel comprehensive dataset for traffic accident detection. This datasets is specifically designed to bolster computer vision and action recognition systems in predicting and detecting road traffic accidents. We integrated datasets from wide variety of data sources, road networks, weather conditions, and regions across the globe. This approach is underpinned by empirical studies, aiming to contribute to the discourse on how technology can enhance the quality of life in densely populated areas. This research aims to bridge existing research gaps by introducing benchmark datasets that leverage state-of-the-art algorithms tailored for traffic accident detection in smart cities. These dataset is expected to advance academic research and also enhance real-time accident detection applications, contributing significantly to the evolution of smart urban environments. Our study marks a pivotal step towards safer, more efficient smart cities, harnessing the power of AI and machine learning to transform urban living.

Reza Soosahabi, Magdy Bayoumi

In this work, we propose a novel framework to identify and mitigate a recently disclosed covert channel scheme exploiting unprotected broadcast messages in cellular MAC layer protocols. Examples of covert channel are used in data exfiltration, remote command-and-control (CnC) and espionage. Responsibly disclosed to GSMA (CVD-2021-0045), the SPARROW covert channel scheme exploits the downlink power of LTE/5G base-stations that broadcast contention resolution identity (CRI) from any anonymous device according to the 3GPP standards. Thus, the SPARROW devices can covertly relay short messages across long-distance which can be potentially harmful to critical infrastructure. The SPARROW schemes can also complement the solutions for long-range M2M applications. This work investigates the security vs. performance trade-off in CRI-based contention resolution mechanisms. Then it offers a rigorously designed method to randomly obfuscate CRI broadcast in future 5G/6G standards. Compared to CRI length reduction, the proposed method achieves considerable protection against SPARROW exploitation with less impact on the random-access performance as shown in the numerical results.

Zag ElSayed, Nelly Elsayed, Chengcheng Li et al.

Network security morning (NSM) is essential for any cybersecurity system, where the average cost of a cyber attack is 1.1 million. No matter how secure a system, it will eventually fail without proper and continuous monitoring. No wonder that the cybersecurity market is expected to grow up to $170.4 billion in 2022. However, the majority of legacy industries do not invest in NSM implementation until it is too late due to the initial and operation costs and static unutilized resources. Thus, this paper proposes a novel dynamic Internet of things (IoT) architecture for an industrial NSM that features a low installation and operation cost, low power consumption, intelligent organization behavior, and environmentally friendly operation. As a case study, the system is implemented in a mid-range oil a gas manufacturing facility in the southern states with more than 300 machines and servers over three remote locations and a production plant that features a challenging atmosphere condition. The proposed system successfully shows a significant saving (>65%) in power consumption, acquires one-tenth of the installation cost, develops an intelligent operation expert system tool as well as saves the environment from more than 500mg of CO2 pollution per hour, promoting green IoT systems.

Mahmoud Darwich, Yasser Ismail, Talal Darwich et al.

Frequently accessed video streams are pre-transcoded into several formats to satisfy the characteristics of all display devices. Storing several video stream formats imposes a high cost on video stream providers using the old classical way. Alternatively, cloud providers offer a high flexibility of using their services and at a low cost relatively. Therefore, video stream companies adopted cloud technology to store their video streams. Generally, having all video streams stored in one type of cloud storage, the cost rises gradually. More importantly, the variation of the access pattern to frequently accessed video streams impacts negatively the storage cost and increases it significantly. To optimize storage usage and lower its cost, we propose a method that manages the cloud hierarchy storage. Particularly, we develop an algorithm that operates on parts of different videos that are frequently accessed and stores them in their suitable storage type cloud. Experiments came up with promising results on reducing the cost of using cloud storage by 18.75 %.

Mahmoud Darwich, Ege Beyazit, Mohsen Amini Salehiy et al.

Video transcoding is the process of converting a video to the format supported by the viewer's device. Video transcoding requires huge storage and computational resources, thus, many video stream providers choose to carry it out on the cloud. Video streaming providers generally need to prepare several formats of the same video (termed pre-transcoding) and stream the appropriate format to the viewer. However, pre-transcoding requires enormous storage space and imposes a significant cost to the stream provider. More importantly, pre-transcoding proven to be inefficient due to the long-tail access pattern to video streams in a repository. To reduce the incurred cost, in this research, we propose a method to partially pre-transcode video streams and re-transcode the rest of it in an on-demand manner. We will develop a method to strike a trade-off between pre-transcoding and on-demand transcoding of video streams to reduce the overall cost. Experimental results show the efficiency of our approach, particularly, when a high percentage of videos are accessed frequently. In such repositories, the proposed approach reduces the incurred cost by up to 70\%.

Xiangbo Li, Mahmoud Darwich, Magdy Bayoumi et al.

Video streaming, in various forms of video on demand (VOD), live, and 360 degree streaming, has grown dramatically during the past few years. In comparison to traditional cable broadcasters whose contents can only be watched on TVs, video streaming is ubiquitous and viewers can flexibly watch the video contents on various devices, ranging from smart-phones to laptops and large TV screens. Such ubiquity and flexibility are enabled by interweaving multiple technologies, such as video compression, cloud computing, content delivery networks, and several other technologies. As video streaming gains more popularity and dominates the Internet traffic, it is essential to understand the way it operates and the interplay of different technologies involved in it. Accordingly, the first goal of this paper is to unveil sophisticated processes to deliver a raw captured video to viewers' devices. In particular, we elaborate on the video encoding, transcoding, packaging, encryption, and delivery processes. We survey recent efforts in academia and industry to enhance these processes. As video streaming industry is increasingly becoming reliant on cloud computing, the second goal of this survey is to explore and survey the ways cloud services are utilized to enable video streaming services. The third goal of the study is to position the undertaken research works in cloud-based video streaming and identify challenges that need to be obviated in future to advance cloud-based video streaming industry to a more flexible and user-centric service.

Mahmoud Darwich, Yasser Ismail, Talal Darwich et al.

Video stream is converted to several formats to support the user's device, this conversion process is called video transcoding, which imposes high storage and powerful resources. With emerging of cloud technology, video stream companies adopted to process video on the cloud. Generally, many formats of the same video are made (pre-transcoded) and streamed to the adequate user's device. However, pre-transcoding demands huge storage space and incurs a high-cost to the video stream companies. More importantly, the pre-transcoding of video streams could be hierarchy carried out through different storage types in the cloud. To minimize the storage cost, in this paper, we propose a method to store video streams in the hierarchical storage of the cloud. Particularly, we develop a method to decide which video stream should be pre-transcoded in its suitable cloud storage to minimize the overall cost. Experimental simulation and results show the effectiveness of our approach, specifically, when the percentage of frequently accessed videos is high in repositories, the proposed approach minimizes the overall cost by up to 40 percent.

Zaghloul Saad Zaghloul, Magdy Bayoumi

Controlling the surrounding world and predicting future events has always seemed like a dream, but that could become a reality using a Brain-Computer/Machine Interface (BCI/BMI). Epilepsy is a group of neurological diseases characterized by epileptic seizures. It affects millions of people worldwide, with 80 percent of cases occurring in developing countries. This can result in accidents and sudden, unexpected death. Seizures can happen undetectably in newborns, comatose, or motor-impaired patients, especially due to the fact that many medical personnel is not qualified for EEG signal analysis. Therefore, a portable automated detection and monitoring solution is in high demand. Thus, in this study, a system of a wireless wearable adaptive for early prediction of epilepsy seizures is proposed, works via minimally invasive wireless technology paired with an external control device (e.g., a doctors smartphone), with a higher than standard accuracy 71 percent and prediction time (14.56 sec). This novel architecture has not only opened new opportunities for daily usable BCI implementations, but they can also save a life by helping to prevent a seizure fatal consequences

Nelly Elsayed, Anthony S. Maida, Magdy Bayoumi

Hybrid LSTM-fully convolutional networks (LSTM-FCN) for time series classification have produced state-of-the-art classification results on univariate time series. We show that replacing the LSTM with a gated recurrent unit (GRU) to create a GRU-fully convolutional network hybrid model (GRU-FCN) can offer even better performance on many time series datasets. The proposed GRU-FCN model outperforms state-of-the-art classification performance in many univariate and multivariate time series datasets. In addition, since the GRU uses a simpler architecture than the LSTM, it has fewer training parameters, less training time, and a simpler hardware implementation, compared to the LSTM-based models.

Nelly Elsayed, Anthony S. Maida, Magdy Bayoumi

Spatiotemporal sequence prediction is an important problem in deep learning. We study next-frame(s) video prediction using a deep-learning-based predictive coding framework that uses convolutional, long short-term memory (convLSTM) modules. We introduce a novel reduced-gate convolutional LSTM(rgcLSTM) architecture that requires a significantly lower parameter budget than a comparable convLSTM. By using a single multi-function gate, our reduced-gate model achieves equal or better next-frame(s) prediction accuracy than the original convolutional LSTM while using a smaller parameter budget, thereby reducing training time and memory requirements. We tested our reduced gate modules within a predictive coding architecture on the moving MNIST and KITTI datasets. We found that our reduced-gate model has a significant reduction of approximately 40 percent of the total number of training parameters and a 25 percent reduction in elapsed training time in comparison with the standard convolutional LSTM model. The performance accuracy of the new model was also improved. This makes our model more attractive for hardware implementation, especially on small devices. We also explored a space of twenty different gated architectures to get insight into how our rgcLSTM fit into that space.