arXiv subjects

Alaa Awad Abdellatif

Publications and source records attributed to Alaa Awad Abdellatif.

16 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

RIoT Digital Twin: Modeling, Deployment, and Optimization of Reconfigurable IoT System with Optical-Radio Wireless Integration

This paper proposes an optimized Reconfigurable Internet of Things (RIoT) framework that integrates optical and radio wireless technologies with a focus on energy efficiency, scalability, and adaptability. To address the inherent complexity of hybrid optical-radio environments, a high-fidelity Digital Twin (DT) is developed within the Network Simulator 3 (NS-3) platform. The DT models deploy subsystems of the RIoT architecture, including radio frequency (RF) communication, optical wireless communication (OWC), and energy harvesting and consumption mechanisms that enable autonomous operation. Real-time energy and power measurements from target hardware platforms are also incorporated to ensure accurate representation of physical behavior and enable runtime analysis and optimization. Building on this foundation, a proactive cross-layer optimization strategy is devised to balance energy efficiency and quality of service (QoS). The strategy dynamically reconfigures RIoT nodes by adapting transmission rates, wake/sleep scheduling, and access technology selection. Results demonstrate that the proposed framework, combining digital twin technology, hybrid optical-radio integration, and data-driven energy modeling, substantially enhances the performance, resilience, and sustainability of 6G IoT networks.

cs.ET↗

arXiv2025

Edge-Enabled UAV Swarm Deployment for Rapid Post-Disaster Search and Rescue

This paper presents an optimized Joint Radar-Communication (JRC) system utilizing multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to simultaneously achieve sensing and communication objectives. By leveraging UAVs equipped with dual radar and communication capabilities, the proposed framework aims to maximize radar sensing performance across all UAVs in challenging environments. The proposed approach focuses on formulating and solving a UAV positioning and power allocation problem to optimize multi-UAV sensing and communications performance over multiple targets within designated zones. Due to the NP-hard and combinatorial nature of the problem, we propose a Distributed JRC-based (DJRC) solution. This solution employs an efficient reward for potential actions and consistently selects the best action that maximizes the reward while ensuring both communications and sensing performance. Simulation results demonstrate significant performance improvements of the proposed solution over state-of-the-art radar- or communication-centric trajectory planning methods, with polynomial complexity dependent on the number of UAVs and linear dependence on the iteration count.

cs.ET↗

arXiv2025

Joint Optimization of Multi-UAV Deployment and 3D Positioning in Traffic-Aware Aerial Networks

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as a key enabler for next-generation wireless networks due to their on-demand deployment, high mobility, and ability to provide Line-of-Sight (LoS) connectivity. These features make UAVs particularly well-suited for dynamic and mission-critical applications such as intelligent transportation systems and emergency communications. However, effectively positioning multiple UAVs in real-time to meet non-uniform, time-varying traffic demands remains a significant challenge, especially when aiming to optimize network throughput and resource utilization. In this paper, we propose an Efficient Multi-UAV Traffic-Aware Deployment (EMTAD) Algorithm, a scalable and adaptive framework that dynamically adjusts UAV placements based on real-time user locations and spatial traffic distribution. In contrast to existing methods, EMTAD jointly optimizes UAV positioning and minimizes the number of deployed UAVs, ensuring efficient UE-UAV association while satisfying the traffic demand of users. Simulation results demonstrate that EMTAD significantly improves network performance while reducing deployment overhead by minimizing the number of UAVs required in dynamic and traffic-aware environments.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2024

Learn to Slice, Slice to Learn: Unveiling Online Optimization and Reinforcement Learning for Slicing AI Services

In the face of increasing demand for zero-touch networks to automate network management and operations, two pivotal concepts have emerged: "Learn to Slice" (L2S) and "Slice to Learn" (S2L). L2S involves leveraging Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to optimize network slicing for general services, while S2L centers on tailoring network slices to meet the specific needs of various AI services. The complexity of optimizing and automating S2L surpasses that of L2S due to intricate AI services' requirements, such as handling uncontrollable parameters, learning in adversarial conditions, and achieving long-term performance goals. This paper aims to automate and optimize S2L by integrating the two concepts of L2S and S2L by using an intelligent slicing agent to solve S2L. Indeed, we choose two candidate slicing agents, namely the Exploration and Exploitation (EXP3) and Deep Q-Network (DQN) from the Online Convex Optimization (OCO) and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) frameworks, and compare them. Our evaluation involves a series of carefully designed experiments that offer valuable insights into the strengths and limitations of EXP3 and DQN in slicing for AI services, thereby contributing to the advancement of zero-touch network capabilities.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2024

PDSR: Efficient UAV Deployment for Swift and Accurate Post-Disaster Search and Rescue

This paper introduces a comprehensive framework for Post-Disaster Search and Rescue (PDSR), aiming to optimize search and rescue operations leveraging Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The primary goal is to improve the precision and availability of sensing capabilities, particularly in various catastrophic scenarios. Central to this concept is the rapid deployment of UAV swarms equipped with diverse sensing, communication, and intelligence capabilities, functioning as an integrated system that incorporates multiple technologies and approaches for efficient detection of individuals buried beneath rubble or debris following a disaster. Within this framework, we propose architectural solution and address associated challenges to ensure optimal performance in real-world disaster scenarios. The proposed framework aims to achieve complete coverage of damaged areas significantly faster than traditional methods using a multi-tier swarm architecture. Furthermore, integrating multi-modal sensing data with machine learning for data fusion could enhance detection accuracy, ensuring precise identification of survivors.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2024

Slicing for AI: An Online Learning Framework for Network Slicing Supporting AI Services

The forthcoming 6G networks will embrace a new realm of AI-driven services that requires innovative network slicing strategies, namely slicing for AI, which involves the creation of customized network slices to meet Quality of service (QoS) requirements of diverse AI services. This poses challenges due to time-varying dynamics of users' behavior and mobile networks. Thus, this paper proposes an online learning framework to optimize the allocation of computational and communication resources to AI services, while considering their unique key performance indicators (KPIs), such as accuracy, latency, and cost. We define a problem of optimizing the total accuracy while balancing conflicting KPIs, prove its NP-hardness, and propose an online learning framework for solving it in dynamic environments. We present a basic online solution and two variations employing a pre-learning elimination method for reducing the decision space to expedite the learning. Furthermore, we propose a biased decision space subset selection by incorporating prior knowledge to enhance the learning speed without compromising performance and present two alternatives of handling the selected subset. Our results depict the efficiency of the proposed solutions in converging to the optimal decisions, while reducing decision space and improving time complexity.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2022

Pervasive AI for IoT applications: A Survey on Resource-efficient Distributed Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has witnessed a substantial breakthrough in a variety of Internet of Things (IoT) applications and services, spanning from recommendation systems to robotics control and military surveillance. This is driven by the easier access to sensory data and the enormous scale of pervasive/ubiquitous devices that generate zettabytes (ZB) of real-time data streams. Designing accurate models using such data streams, to predict future insights and revolutionize the decision-taking process, inaugurates pervasive systems as a worthy paradigm for a better quality-of-life. The confluence of pervasive computing and artificial intelligence, Pervasive AI, expanded the role of ubiquitous IoT systems from mainly data collection to executing distributed computations with a promising alternative to centralized learning, presenting various challenges. In this context, a wise cooperation and resource scheduling should be envisaged among IoT devices (e.g., smartphones, smart vehicles) and infrastructure (e.g. edge nodes, and base stations) to avoid communication and computation overheads and ensure maximum performance. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive survey of the recent techniques developed to overcome these resource challenges in pervasive AI systems. Specifically, we first present an overview of the pervasive computing, its architecture, and its intersection with artificial intelligence. We then review the background, applications and performance metrics of AI, particularly Deep Learning (DL) and online learning, running in a ubiquitous system. Next, we provide a deep literature review of communication-efficient techniques, from both algorithmic and system perspectives, of distributed inference, training and online learning tasks across the combination of IoT devices, edge devices and cloud servers. Finally, we discuss our future vision and research challenges.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2022

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Network Selection and Resource Allocation in Heterogeneous multi-RAT Networks

The rapid production of mobile devices along with the wireless applications boom is continuing to evolve daily. This motivates the exploitation of wireless spectrum using multiple Radio Access Technologies (multi-RAT) and developing innovative network selection techniques to cope with such intensive demand while improving Quality of Service (QoS). Thus, we propose a distributed framework for dynamic network selection at the edge level, and resource allocation at the Radio Access Network (RAN) level, while taking into consideration diverse applications' characteristics. In particular, our framework employs a deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (DMARL) algorithm, that aims to maximize the edge nodes' quality of experience while extending the battery lifetime of the nodes and leveraging adaptive compression schemes. Indeed, our framework enables data transfer from the network's edge nodes, with multi-RAT capabilities, to the cloud in a cost and energy-efficient manner, while maintaining QoS requirements of different supported applications. Our results depict that our solution outperforms state-of-the-art techniques of network selection in terms of energy consumption, latency, and cost.

cs.MA↗

arXiv2021

Federated Learning for UAV Swarms Under Class Imbalance and Power Consumption Constraints

The usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in civil and military applications continues to increase due to the numerous advantages that they provide over conventional approaches. Despite the abundance of such advantages, it is imperative to investigate the performance of UAV utilization while considering their design limitations. This paper investigates the deployment of UAV swarms when each UAV carries a machine learning classification task. To avoid data exchange with ground-based processing nodes, a federated learning approach is adopted between a UAV leader and the swarm members to improve the local learning model while avoiding excessive air-to-ground and ground-to-air communications. Moreover, the proposed deployment framework considers the stringent energy constraints of UAVs and the problem of class imbalance, where we show that considering these design parameters significantly improves the performances of the UAV swarm in terms of classification accuracy, energy consumption and availability of UAVs when compared with several baseline algorithms.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Reinforcement Learning for Intelligent Healthcare Systems: A Comprehensive Survey

The rapid increase in the percentage of chronic disease patients along with the recent pandemic pose immediate threats on healthcare expenditure and elevate causes of death. This calls for transforming healthcare systems away from one-on-one patient treatment into intelligent health systems, to improve services, access and scalability, while reducing costs. Reinforcement Learning (RL) has witnessed an intrinsic breakthrough in solving a variety of complex problems for diverse applications and services. Thus, we conduct in this paper a comprehensive survey of the recent models and techniques of RL that have been developed/used for supporting Intelligent-healthcare (I-health) systems. This paper can guide the readers to deeply understand the state-of-the-art regarding the use of RL in the context of I-health. Specifically, we first present an overview for the I-health systems challenges, architecture, and how RL can benefit these systems. We then review the background and mathematical modeling of different RL, Deep RL (DRL), and multi-agent RL models. After that, we provide a deep literature review for the applications of RL in I-health systems. In particular, three main areas have been tackled, i.e., edge intelligence, smart core network, and dynamic treatment regimes. Finally, we highlight emerging challenges and outline future research directions in driving the future success of RL in I-health systems, which opens the door for exploring some interesting and unsolved problems.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Communication-Efficient Hierarchical Federated Learning for IoT Heterogeneous Systems with Imbalanced Data

Federated learning (FL) is a distributed learning methodology that allows multiple nodes to cooperatively train a deep learning model, without the need to share their local data. It is a promising solution for telemonitoring systems that demand intensive data collection, for detection, classification, and prediction of future events, from different locations while maintaining a strict privacy constraint. Due to privacy concerns and critical communication bottlenecks, it can become impractical to send the FL updated models to a centralized server. Thus, this paper studies the potential of hierarchical FL in IoT heterogeneous systems and propose an optimized solution for user assignment and resource allocation on multiple edge nodes. In particular, this work focuses on a generic class of machine learning models that are trained using gradient-descent-based schemes while considering the practical constraints of non-uniformly distributed data across different users. We evaluate the proposed system using two real-world datasets, and we show that it outperforms state-of-the-art FL solutions. In particular, our numerical results highlight the effectiveness of our approach and its ability to provide 4-6% increase in the classification accuracy, with respect to hierarchical FL schemes that consider distance-based user assignment. Furthermore, the proposed approach could significantly accelerate FL training and reduce communication overhead by providing 75-85% reduction in the communication rounds between edge nodes and the centralized server, for the same model accuracy.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

I-Health: Leveraging Edge Computing and Blockchain for Epidemic Management

Epidemic situations typically demand intensive data collection and management from different locations/entities within a strict time constraint. Such demand can be fulfilled by leveraging the intensive and easy deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The management and containment of such situations also rely on cross-organizational and national collaboration. Thus, this paper proposes an Intelligent-Health (I-Health) system that aims to aggregate diverse e-health entities in a unique national healthcare system by enabling swift, secure exchange and storage of medical data. In particular, we design an automated patients monitoring scheme, at the edge, which enables the prompt discovery, remote monitoring, and fast emergency response for critical medical events, such as emerging epidemics. Furthermore, we develop a blockchain optimization model that aims to optimize medical data sharing between different health entities to provide effective and secure health services. Finally, we show the effectiveness of our system, in adapting to different critical events, while highlighting the benefits of the proposed I-Health system.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2020

Compress or Interfere?

Rapid evolution of wireless medical devices and network technologies has fostered the growth of remote monitoring systems. Such new technologies enable monitoring patients' medical records anytime and anywhere without limiting patients' activities. However, critical challenges have emerged with remote monitoring systems due to the enormous amount of generated data that need to be efficiently processed and wirelessly transmitted to the service providers in time. Thus, in this paper, we leverage full-duplex capabilities for fast transmission, while tackling the trade-off between Quality of Service (QoS) requirements and consequent self-interference (SI) for efficient remote monitoring healthcare systems. The proposed framework jointly considers the residual SI resulting from simultaneous transmission and reception along with the compressibility feature of medical data in order to optimize the data transmission over wireless channels, while maintaining the application's QoS constraint. Our simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed solution in terms of minimizing the transmission power, residual self-interference, and encoding distortion.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2020

SSHealth: Toward Secure, Blockchain-Enabled Healthcare Systems

The future of healthcare systems is being shaped by incorporating emerged technological innovations to drive new models for patient care. By acquiring, integrating, analyzing, and exchanging medical data at different system levels, new practices can be introduced, offering a radical improvement to healthcare services. This paper presents a novel smart and secure Healthcare system (ssHealth), which, leveraging advances in edge computing and blockchain technologies, permits epidemics discovering, remote monitoring, and fast emergency response. The proposed system also allows for secure medical data exchange among local healthcare entities, thus realizing the integration of multiple national and international entities and enabling the correlation of critical medical events for, e.g., emerging epidemics management and control. In particular, we develop a blockchain-based architecture and enable a flexible configuration thereof, which optimize medical data sharing between different health entities and fulfil the diverse levels of Quality of Service (QoS) that ssHealth may require. Finally, we highlight the benefits of the proposed ssHealth system and possible directions for future research.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2020

Edge Computing For Smart Health: Context-aware Approaches, Opportunities, and Challenges

Improving efficiency of healthcare systems is a top national interest worldwide. However, the need of delivering scalable healthcare services to the patients while reducing costs is a challenging issue. Among the most promising approaches for enabling smart healthcare (s-health) are edge-computing capabilities and next-generation wireless networking technologies that can provide real-time and cost-effective patient remote monitoring. In this paper, we present our vision of exploiting multi-access edge computing (MEC) for s-health applications. We envision a MEC-based architecture and discuss the benefits that it can bring to realize in-network and context-aware processing so that the s-health requirements are met. We then present two main functionalities that can be implemented leveraging such an architecture to provide efficient data delivery, namely, multimodal data compression and edge-based feature extraction for event detection. The former allows efficient and low distortion compression, while the latter ensures high-reliability and fast response in case of emergency applications. Finally, we discuss the main challenges and opportunities that edge computing could provide and possible directions for future research.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2020

Active Learning-based Classification in Automated Connected Vehicles

Machine learning has emerged as a promising paradigm for enabling connected, automated vehicles to autonomously cruise the streets and react to unexpected situations. A key challenge, however, is to collect and select real-time and reliable information for the correct classification of unexpected, and often rare, situations that may happen on the road. Indeed, the data generated by vehicles, or received from neighboring vehicles, may be affected by errors or have different levels of resolution and freshness. To tackle this challenge, we propose an active learning framework that, leveraging the information collected through onboard sensors as well as received from other vehicles, effectively deals with scarce and noisy data. In particular, given the available information, our solution selects the data to add to the training set by trading off between two essential features, namely, quality and diversity. The results, obtained using real-world data sets, show that the proposed method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art solutions, providing high classification accuracy at the cost of a limited bandwidth requirement for the data exchange between vehicles.

cs.NI↗