A Software Defined Network Based Research on Fairness in Multimedia

Ahmed Osama Basil, Mu Mu, Ali Al-Sherbaz

Abstract

The demand for online distribution of high quality and high throughput content has led to non-cooperative competition of network resources between a growing number of media applications. This causes a significant impact on network efficiency, the quality of user experience (QoE) as well as a discrepancy of QoE across user devices. Within a multi-user multi-device environment, measuring and maintaining perceivable fairness becomes as critical as achieving the QoE on individual user applications. This paper discusses application- and humanlevel fairness over networked multimedia applications and how such fairness can be managed through novel network designs using programmable networks such as software-defined networks (SDN).

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in MultiMedia
Publisher	ACM Press
Pages	11-18
Number of pages	8
ISBN (Print)	9781450369152
Publication status	Published - 25 Oct 2019
Event	FAT/MM: Fairness Accountability and Transparency in Multimedia : An ACM MM 2019 Workshop - Nice, France Duration: 21 Oct 2019 → 25 Oct 2019 https://acmmm.org/workshops/

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in MultiMedia

Internet address	https://acmmm.org/workshops/

DOI: 10.1145/3347447.3356750

Paper available at: http://www.mendeley.com/research/software-defined-network-based-research-fairness-multimedia


All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Software defined cognitive networking: supporting intelligent online video streaming

Mu, M. (2018). Software defined cognitive networking: supporting intelligent online video streaming. 2018 15th IEEE Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC). https://doi.org/10.1109/CCNC.2018.8319167

Abstract
Adaptive media such as HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) is becoming a standard tool for online video distribution. The non-cooperative competition of network resources between a growing number of adaptive video applications has a significant detrimental impact on user experience and network efficiency. Existing network infrastructures often prioritise fast packet forwarding, which do not always contribute to the improved user experience. Future network management must leverage application and user-level cognitive factors to allocate scarce network resources effectively and intelligently. Our software defined cognitive networking (SDCN) project, supported by the Research Councils UK, aims at incorporating new developments in human cognition, media technology and communication networks to ensure the user experience, user-level fairness and network efficiency of online adaptive media using software defined networking-assisted and QoE-aware resource management.


To read goto: https://pure.northampton.ac.uk/en/publications/software-defined-cognitive-networking-supporting-intelligent-onli-2

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Further Experiments in Teaching Neural Networks

The basis of this idea was inspired by some work that can be found in the paper Varley et al (2005). The idea is to use spreadsheets as a tool for teaching neural networks. These approaches were developed for the teaching of these approaches and the videos were recorded in a class whilst teaching the concept. Both Excel and Google Sheets have been tried in all three of the approaches.

1. Creating a single neuron
The idea was to use a spreadsheet to replicate the neuron. The idea was to get the students to build the neuron step by step, starting with the inputs, then the weights, then the weighted sum and threshold for a simple neuron. Personally, I like the approach for two reasons; firstly the concept that only a single set of weights is used is sneaked in, the second is builds all the stages up gradually and visually.
Video below shows the building of the model and it's use. 



2. Training a single neuron.
This approach extends the ideas from the approach above, quickly building a single neuron, but expands into training a neuron. Cutting and pasting the blocks to show the idea of epochs.

Training is via the delta rule (change in the weight [x] = learning coefficient * input [x] * (what output we wanted - actual output from the neuron). I like the approach because it seems to show the weights being arrived at in a very mechanical way by repeating actions -  machine learning is not magic!

The video below shows the stages.



3. Building a simple Neural Network
Previously only a single neuron was produced. In this approach, the ideas from build a neuron in Excel activity are extended to three neurons connected in the same worksheet. The exercise then connects the outputs from two neurons (which have a common input) as the inputs of a third neuron building an XOR gate (which a single simple neuron can not implement). The video below shows all of the stages.


 




4. Where next?
It would be nice to extend the idea further to have the training of a simple neural network above. If anyone manages this please add the link into the comments.


Bibliography
VARLEY, M; PEAK, M; HEYS, J; COLLINS, G; KONSTANTARAS A,  VALLIANATOS, F; PICTON P (2005) Spreadsheet Software as a Teaching Tool for Concepts in Electronic Engineering, [Online] http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2005athens/ee/papers/507-162.pdf accessed on: 20/2/2016

Turner, S. J. (2017) Experience of using spreadsheets as a bridge in the understanding of AI techniques. Paper presented to: 13th China Europe Symposium on Software Engineering Education (CEISEE), Athens, Greece, 24-25 May 2017.


All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Meet the Researchers: Michael Opoku Agyeman

Taken from: http://www.computing.northampton.ac.uk/~michael/Publications.html

Book

Michael Opoku Agyeman, 3D Networks-on-Chip Architecture Optimization for Low Power Design, LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2015.

Journal Papers

1. Michael O. Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia, Alireza Shahrabi, ”Heterogeneous 3D Network-ON-Chip Archi-tectures: Area and Power Aware Design Techniques,” Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computers, Vol. 22, No. 4 (2013)
2. Michael O. Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia, Alireza Shahrabi, ”Efficient Routing Techniques in Heteroge-neous 3D Networks-on-Chip,” Parallel Computing, Vol 39, No. 9 (2013)
3. Michael Opoku Agyeman, ”A Study of Optimization Techniques for 3D Networks-on-Chip Archi-tectures for Low Power and High Performance Applications,” International Journal of Computer Applications (IJCA), Vol. 121, No. 6, pp 1-8 (2015)
4. Michael Opoku Agyeman, ”A Low Overhead Fault Reporting Scheme for Resilient 3D Network-on-Chip Applications,” Communications on Applied Electronics (CAE), Vol. 2, No. 4, pp 43-48, 2015
5. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Kenneth Tong, Terrence Mak, ”An Improved Wireless Communication Fabric for Performance Aware Network-on-Chip Architectures,” (invited paper) accepted by: Inter- national Journal of Computing and Digital Systems (IJCDS), 2015
6. Michael O. Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia, Nader Bagherzadeh, ”Performance and Energy Aware In-homogeneous 3D Networks-on-Chip Architecture Generation,” IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (IEEE TPDS), Vol.PP, No.99, pp.1,1 (2015)

Conference Papers 

1. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia: Power and Area Optimisation in Heterogeneous 3D Networks-on-Chip Architectures. SIGARCH Computer Architecture News 39(4): 2011, 106-107
2. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia, Alireza Shahrabi: Low Power Heterogeneous 3D Networks-on-Chip Architectures. Proceedings of International Conference on High Performance Computing and Simulation (HPCS) 2011: 533-538.
3. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia: Optimising Heterogeneous 3D Networks-on-Chip. Parallel Computing in Electrical Engineering (PARELEC) 2011: 25-30
4. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia: An Adaptive Router Architecture for Heterogeneous 3D Networks-on-Chip, NORCHIP, 2011: 4, 14-15
5. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia: A Systematic Generation of Optimized Heterogeneous 3D Networks-on-Chip Architecture, NASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems (AHS), 2013: 79-83
6. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia: Optimised Application Specific Architecture Generation and Mapping Approach for Heterogeneous 3D Networks-on-Chip, IEEE International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), 2013: 794-801
7. Michael Opoku Agyeman: Optimized Heterogeneous 3D Networks-on-Chip for High Performance System-on-Chip Design, Proceedings of Korean Conference on Semiconductors (KCS), 2014
8. Michael Opoku Agyeman: An Eficient Fault-tolerant Routing Algorithm for 3D Networks-on-Chip, Proceedings of Korean Conference on Semiconductors (KCS), 2014
9. Michael Opoku Agyeman: HetNoC3D: A User Friendly Simulation Framework for Homogeneous and Heterogeneous 3D NoC Architectures, Proceedings of Korean Conference on Semiconductors (KCS), 2014
10. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Ali Ahmadinia: Impact Analysis of Through-Silicon-Via Variation on Per- formance and Energy Consumption of 3D Networks-on-Chip Architectures, 3D Integration Workshop, Proceedings of Design, Automation & Test in Europe (DATE), 2014
11. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Wen Zong, Ji-Xiang Wan, Alex Yakovlev ,Kenneth Tong, Terrence Mak: Novel Hybrid Wired-Wireless Network-on-Chip Architectures: Transducer and Communication Fab- ric Design, International Symposium on Networks-on-Chip (NoCs), 2015: 32:1-32:2
12. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Kenneth Tong, Terrence Mak: An Improved Wireless Communication Fabric for Emerging Network-on-Chip Design, International Conference on Future Networks and Communications (FNC) / International Conference on Mobile Systems and Pervasive Computing (MobiSPC) Affiliated Workshops, 2015: 415 - 420
13. Wen Zong, Michael Opoku Agyeman, Xiaohang Wang, Terrence Mak: Unbiased Regional Congestion Aware Selection Function for NoCs. International Symposium on Networks-on-Chip (NoCs), 2015: 19:1-19:8
14. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Kenneth Tong, Terrence Mak: Reliable and Performance-Aware Communication Fabric for Global Communication in on-Chip Networks, IEEE 28th Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI and Nanotechnology Systems Symposium (DFTS), DFT 2015: 205-210
15. Michael Opoku Agyeman, Ji-Xiang Wan, Quoc-Tuan Vien, Wen Zong, Alex Yakovlev, Kenneth Tong, Terrence Mak: On the Design of Reliable Hybrid Wired-Wireless Network-on-Chip Architectures, IEEE 9th International Symposium on Embedded Multicore/Many-core Systems-on-Chip (MCSoC), 2015: 251 - 258

If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

BCS Bedford and IET: Network Rail Southeast Map Project

Details taken from: http://www.beds.bcs.org.uk/event.php?event=118

Network Rail Southeast Map Project

Date	Tuesday 23 Feb 2016
Time	18:30
Registration	Please register for this event
Location	Tavistock Suite, The Park Inn Hotel, 2 St Mary's Street, Bedford MK42 0AR (Free parking at rear - inform hotel reception)
Speakers	Alan Dalley and Katherine Thomas, Network Rail.
Abstract	The project to develop and deliver the Southeast Map app for Network Rail used leading-edge mobile technologies to process and present large amounts of publicly available train running data seamlessly, enabling operational staff to make better informed decisions, enable faster recovery of rail network performance following incidents and provide better quality information to passengers. Its unique value is in the way live data is presented through a simple and recognisable map-based interface. Information that was previously delivered in a complex and inefficient way is now available at a glance to a wider customer base, reducing costs and improving insight, responsiveness and communication with passengers. From the initial customer requirement the project used agile delivery techniques to provide a proof of concept, engage the customer through collaboration, manage complex data and undertake testing to deliver a highly innovative product.
Agenda	6.00pm Registration, refreshments and networking 6.30pm Guest Speakers - Alan Daley & Katherine Thomas 7.20pm Opportunity to question the speakers 7.45pm Opportunity to network and talk to the speakers
Downloads	Flyer

 All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

mini-project:Social Network analysis - fun, informative

The second in the occasional series of mini-computing projects by people in Northamptonshire.


Part of this was originally posted at: http://scottjturnerranting.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/social-network-analysis-fun-and.html

figure 1. #StarWars 30/12/15

Playing with Socioviz (socioviz.net) - a free online tool for looking at influence on twitter. The image to left show connections between tweeters using the hashtag #StarWars on the 30th December 2015 up to 6pm (GMT).

Figure 2 shows the most active tweeters for this hashtag and the most influential based on Retweets and Mentions - the four greatest influencers are picked out in the video below, showing the map evolving (speed-up 20 times).

 

figure 2

To experiment with this a bit more +The Royal Institution  has a long traditional of holding a series of Christmas Lectures  which are now televised, Dr Kevin Fong presented this years. I was curious about who the biggest influencers on twitter were for the hashtag #xmaslectures over the three days of the show. The three biggest influencers came out as @Kevin_Fong @Ri_Science @astro_timpeake, the presenter, the host organisation and one of the main guests (had to present virtually as he is on the ISS at the time of writing). The figure below shows the centre of the graph were the majority of the connections.

figure 3 #xmaslectures

To read more about this go to the tutorial by Alessandro Zonin https://alessandrozonin.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/socioviz-a-free-social-network-analysis-tool-for-twitter/.

Another example of used it for is plotting a particular tweetchat (based on hashtag) and seeing if there were groupings within the data. There was for this particular chat.

figure 4 plotting a tweetchat

Looking at certain an institution's considerable twitter links (@UniNorthants) below over a one month period (8/12/2015-8/1/2016). Different types of groups and links between groups example shown in figures 6 and 7.

figure 5 organisations twitter connections over a month

figure 6 same organisation just focussing on one group

figure 7 links between groups

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Network Coding/Cryptography for Wireless Network Security over Galois Field Theory

Alyaa Al Barrak, a PhD student at the University of Northampton, is working on linking wireless networking using Galois Field Theory. An overview of the work is shown below.


Abstract

Network Security (NS) is a concept to protect data transmission over network. Security is a method to making sure that unauthorized people cannot influence the data. Coding is a method to ensuring that data remain readable even in the existence of errors. Network coding points out to each node taking its received packets, computing a linear combination over a finite field, and forwarding the result to another node till reach the final destination.

Data integrity is a major concept in any coding system. For example, if a packet is traveled over a network which is prone to noise, interference and channel fading then it could be altered by a network coding method and determining the optimum coding coefficients is a challenge.

Complexity and the overhead are two significant keys in the NC which are used to measure the efficiency of the coding algorithms in terms of errors correction rate and computational power.

The aim of this research is to evaluate and design an algorithm for wireless communication networking using Galois Field Theory taking into account data integrity. This algorithm will be able to detect the damaged data and decrease the bit errors rate.

Supervisory team

Dr Ali Al-Sherbaz

Prof. Kamal Bechkoum

Dr Robin Crockett.

mobile network for disaster management

MOBILE NETWORK SYSTEM FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT

OLATUNDE AYANLEYE 

Abstract

One common problem associated with catastrophes as pointed out in this document research, is the issue of lack of communication and information. Over recent years, there have been deliberations about how disasters could have been managed better with the presence of good communication medium and means to vital information prior and during the course of the rescue process. This document sheds more light on this problem with analysis of real case studies and a proposed solution to tackle it. It describes the development of part of an ongoing project designed to handle real time access to information and a fast deployable means of communication. The project involves the use of wireless mesh network and mobile devices to establish a setup for the exchange of information to manage disasters.

The University of Northampton's, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies offers five courses within the MSc Computing postgraduate provision (shown below) all available either part-time or full-time. 

• MSc Computing
• MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Immersive Technologies)

Raspberry Pi in Northampton

A informal, but heavily over-subscribed (15 places but around 70 people registered interest), Raspberry Pi  event for  teachers and STEM ambassador was held at the University of Northampton on 16th October 2013. A collaboration between the Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies, University of Northampton; LEBC (who support STEM activities within Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes through the STEM ambassador); with support from BCS Northampton through the loan on the night of some extra equipment.

The session was meant to be (and I hope was) a chance to exchange ideas for teachers and ambassadors; set-up and try out Raspberry Pis; try a little Scratch or Python programming and to start up a discussion across the area what can be done (and is being done) with Raspberry Pi. Nigel Barrett (Corby Technical School) and Scott Turner (University of Northampton) facilitated the groups, with support from Julie Messenger and other LEBC staff.

Some interesting resources were highlighted

• The MagPi magazine a free to download magazine with some interesting things to do with the RaspberryPi.
• ScoopIts on Physical Computing
• how to find the operating system on-line; download and install the operating system on to a SD Card http://learn.adafruit.com/downloads/pdf/adafruit-raspberry-pi-lesson-1-preparing-and-sd-card-for-your-raspberry-pi.pdf by Simon Monk and the main download site for Raspberry PI OS http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
• Setting up the Raspberry PI including selecting basic configuration settings:      http://learn.adafruit.com/downloads/pdf/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-2-first-time-configuration.pdf 
• Interesting article on Raspberry and Minecraft (again from MagPi)
• There is even and on-line teacher's resource and the main resource the student's book on combining Python, Raspberry Pi, and Minecraft.

Dr Ali Al-Sherbaz: Mobile, wireless and networking

Research interests

1. Computer Network and Wireless Technologies
2. Mobile Ad-Hoc Routing
3. Signal Processing and Cognitive Radio 
4. Cybernet Security
5. Computational Mathematics

Recent Publications

2013

• ihsan lami, Ali Al-Sherbaz (2013) W2BC: A Proposal for a Converged Baseband Implementation of WiMax and WiFi Transceivers International Journal of Information and Network Security (IJINS) Vol.2, No.1, February 2013, pp. 426 - 437 ISSN: 2089-3299

2012

• Dravid R and Al-Sherbaz, A (2012) Optimization of Routing Protocols for Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) to Achieve Higher Quality of Service for Real-Time Applications 3rd Annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Bangalore, India, December 12-14 2012
• Turner, S. and Al-Sherbaz, A. (2012) What's the problem with problem-solving? Seminar Presentation presented to: Insights into the future of learning and teaching at Northampton, University of Northampton, 3rd December 2012
• Al-Sherbaz Ali, Dravid Rashmi, Svennevik Espen and Picton Phil  (2012)" iSurvival: A Collaborative Mobile Network System for Disaster Management" PRO-VE’12 -13th Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises : Collaborative Networks in the Internet of Services, University of Bournemouth, 1-3 October 2012
• Al-Sherbaz A, Dravid R (2012) "Ultilising Mobile Mesh Networks for Disaster Management" M4D2012, 27-29 February 2012, New Delhi, India

2011

• Al-Sherbaz A, Minai A, Xue J, Dravid R (2011) "An Embedded Pedagogic Model for Computer Forensics within an
  Undergraduate Programme" 7th Annual Teaching Computer Forensics Workshop, University of Sunderland 10th November 2011

2010

• AL-SHERBAZ, A.; KUSELER, T.; ADAMS, C.; MARŠÁLEK, R.; POVALAČ, K. (2010) WiMAX Parameters Adaptation Through A Baseband Processor Using Discrete Particle Swarm Method. International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies, Cambridge Press, 2010, vol. 2010 (2), no. 2, p. 1 - 7. ISSN: 1759- 0787.

2009

• Al-Sherbaz A., C. Adams, S. Jassim (2009) “WiMAX-WiFi Convergence with OFDM Bridge”, SPIE Defence and Security Proceeding Conference, Orlando, Florida USA, April-2009.

2008

• Al-Sherbaz A., C. Adams, S. Jassim (2008) “Convergence in wireless transmission technology promises best of both worlds”, SPIE Opt electronics and Optical Communications newsroom, Nov-2008  
•  Al-Sherbaz A., C. Adams, S. Jassim (2008)  “Private Synchronization Technique for Heterogeneous Wireless Network (WiFi and WiMAX)”, SPIE Defence and Security Proceeding Conference, Orlando, Florida USA, March-2008 
•  Li F., A. Al-Sharbaz, S. Jassim, and C. Adams (2008), “Credibility Based Secure Route Finding in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks”, SPIE Defence and Security Proceeding Conference, Orlando, Florida USA, March-2008 

Contact: ali-al-sherbaz@northampton.ac.uk

Profile: http://www.northampton.ac.uk/people/ali.al-sherbaz 



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