Mohamed Menacer

Development concepts of a media management system dedicated to Quran and Islamic education

This paper describes the design concepts of a media streaming management system dedicated to learning Quran sciences and Islamic studies. The media streaming system consists of three main services: Video-on-Demand (VoD), WebTV with scheduler, and Live streaming. It ensures the delivery of media in proper manner by streaming the content from the server to client. To accomplish this task we combine two different streaming approaches depending on the client type. In case of a PC-based client, traditional streaming using RTSP over UDP or TCP is employed, since the bandwidth fluctuations are not frequent. For handheld devices, we use DASH technology using HTTP to dynamically adapt the bitrate to the bandwidth fluctuations due to the mobility of the user. The proposed media management system dedicated to Quran and Islamic education provides an original approach and offers features, which will be made freely available to Islamic organizations and institutions. This work is being developed following a research program funded NOOR Research Centre at Taibah University, Madinah, Saudi Arabia.

Improving video streaming efficiency, stability and time convergence through client-server cooperation

Many studies have shown that the dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP scheme is limited in achieving efficiency, fairness, and stability. Solutions proposed in the recent literature target these objectives, but tackle them from either client or server side separately. This paper argues the use of a client–server cooperation-based approach to achieve the three objectives. Effectively, information available at the client side, such as buffer occupancy, available throughput, and previous played representation levels, can be used to better control the video streaming efficiency and stability at the client side. On the other hand, information available at the server side, such as the server’s shared bandwidth capacity, and the number of connected clients and their corresponding downloading bitrates, can be leveraged to better tune the system fairness at the server side. Furthermore, the envisioned client–server cooperation aims at shortening the convergence time of the different clients to the fair bitrate allocation without affecting the overall system smoothness while increasing or decreasing the bitrates. The proposed approach is evaluated through extensive simulations using the Network Simulator, NS-3. Its performance is compared against that of notable algorithms, such as the FESTIVE [1] and PANDA [2] schemes. The obtained results show that the cooperation between the client and the server defines a promising approach in enhancing the efficiency, the fairness, the stability as well as shortening the convergence time to the fair bandwidth share.

Design principles for a dedicated web-based collaboration infrastructure for research publications and resources

Due to the very large amount of research resources and materials available through digital libraries, conferences and websites, the search for relevant and focused research materials in a specific topic can be quite difficult and very time consuming because of the large amount of info available from different sources and formats. This issue is even more relevant for research resources in Arabic format, where unstructured libraries and documents are found in many web-based sources. This paper present design principles for the development of a web-based collaboration infrastructure for the collection, organization, storage and dissemination of related research publications and resources in Arabic and English. This work is at its preliminary stage development specifically for Saudi Arabia higher education environment as a model, overall concepts of the infrastructure is presented with the different phases.

Concepts and Architecture of a Dedicated Virtual Learning Environment for Quran and Its Sciences

This paper presents the design concepts and architecture of a new Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) dedicated to learning Quran and its Sciences (QVLE) properly and efficiently and to standardize the availability and use of the different types of Quran learning resources and delivery over the web. The proposed platform structure will cover different technical aspects of learning technologies, as well as efficiently adapt the use and delivery of Quran Sciences resources by providing a dedicated virtual system that integrates various systems which include a dedicated Quran Learning Management System (LMS), eMiqraa (for online learning the recitation and reading Quran), a digital library for various Quran Learning Objects, and streaming of media Quran resources. All these learning systems make the development of a dedicated QVLE a must for learning Quran and its Sciences. The research project is at its preliminary stage for the development of a prototype QVLE model for Learning Quran and its Sciences.

Design Concepts of a KnowledgeBase System for Research and Studies in Quran and Its Science

There is a wealth of research and studies related to Quran and its Sciences that are largely not available online. Usually researchers, in these fields, contact relevant and specific organizations for such information, if they become aware that such journals or proceedings are available/exist through those organizations. Therefore, in most cases thousands of research work tend to be shelved and not properly referenced for online use. This is the main reason why many Quran and Islamic related research works and studies are not well cited, and difficult to search or find online. This research paper presents the design concepts of a customized knowledgebase system that would be used as a knowledge management of research and studies in Quran and its related Sciences, named Quran Research Knowledge Base (QKB). The proposed knowledgebase system provides a mean for information to be collected, organized, and shared for the benefit of researchers as well as organizations, and government agencies. The knowledgebase content is categorized based on Quran and its related sciences research papers, conferences, books, post-graduate thesis and publications, web publishing, products, and other materials. The finalized knowledgebase system is integrated with other systems such as eConferences, online journals and other Virtual Learning systems. The methodology and procedures for populating the knowledgebase with authenticated and accurate content, are also presented.

Gesture recognition system for NOOR eMashaf application: Concepts and architecture

This paper describes the concepts and architecture of a gesture recognition system to be implemented as a navigation component for NOOR eMashaf Android-based mobile application for reading and learning the Holy Quran. It is based on motion detection methods that extract a users hand profile in motion under dynamic lighting conditions and against natural background. The proposed system is being developed into three main phases: detection, tracking and recognition. In the first phase, The detection of the hand, in a natural scene, is captured by a front-facing camera, then the tracking phase where the hands motion is traced, finally the recognition phase should identify the trajectory path of the hand. At a later stage, the captured path is compared with a model database that contains pre-defined gestures, once the gestures are recognized the system will activate the corresponding action. The proposed hand motion detection method proved to be very effective under varying lighting conditions and against natural and complex backgrounds. Thus it is adequate enough to be implemented and integrated with mobile applications in general, and with NOOR eMashaf application, in our case, that enables the control and execution, by the proposed hand gestures, of a specific action or event of the mobile application. Promising results has been obtained so far, at the initial stages of the project.

Design and architecture of a video streaming system dedicated to Quran related multimedia resources

The need to develop a video streaming system dedicated to Quran related multimedia resources becomes a necessity because of the importance of the content and the scarcity of such systems in this field. Furthermore the existing systems, delivering Quran related materials, are limited in term of functionality where users/members are not allow users to upload any content, and do not support for live transmissions of events. The present paper describes the design and architecture of a Web-based Quran Media System (QMS), which is a dedicated delivery platform for Quran related multimedia resources that provides support for both PC-based and Handheld devices. The QMS system is composed of three main services: Video-on-Demand (VoD), scheduled programs, and Live Event. Depending on the client type, PC-based or Handheld devices , two different streaming techniques are used to ensure reliable media delivery in an efficient and adaptive manner. PC-based clients are characterized by high hardware performance and relatively stable bandwidth compared to handheld devices. In such case, traditional streaming using RTSP over UDP is used. In the case of handheld devices, DASH technology using HTTP is used to dynamically adapt the bitrate to the frequent bandwidth fluctuations due to the nature of such devices and most importantly the mobility of the user. The proposed video streaming system dedicated to Quran related resource provides an original approach and offers rich features, which will be made freely available to Islamic organizations and institutions. This work is being developed under a research program funded by NOOR Research Centre at Taibah University, Madinah, Saudi Arabia.

Methodology and processes for collecting, indexing, structuring material and resources of Quran and Islamic studies

Due to the technological advancements in digital technologies in the areas of multimedia, publishing, searching, and indexing, research in the area of Quran and its sciences has noticed a vast increase in terms of digital content. However, the availability of Quran resources on the Internet is scattered, unorganized, in different formats types and languages. As a result, ways to ease the collection and organizing of information is very essential for researchers to save time and efforts during the process of conducting any research or work in the areas of Quran and its sciences. In this paper, methodology and processes for structuring and collecting research material and resources in Quran studies are defined. The collection process goes through the following phases: identifying resources lists, selection of metadata fields, data collection of resources, data entry, and verification and testing. In addition the system is designed to provide statistics on the different resources collected. Finally, the benefits from the proposed systematic processes for collecting Quran resources presents the base for building a Quran and Islamic knowledgebase which will assist academics and researchers in their research work.

Authoring system concept and design for ebook digitization process for efficient online eContent documentation, search, and distribution

This paper presents the concept and design of an authoring system for creating and building an application program for an ebook package, or an ebook portfolio, that would include metadata, meta-content, and other related materials and resources that are stored in a dedicated database. This system is basically a digitization process of the different phase of ebook authoring and development, as well as a structure collection of various type of content and information in a form of hypertext documents, multimedia, and presentations. Although this authoring system has been designed with academic books in mind, it is very suitable for any type of documentation or eContent such as articles, papers, reports, and presentations. This approach of ebook and econtent authoring and development is very useful for online search, manipulation, indexing, distribution and even marketing. Based on the proposed content structured content, Web content can be easily and reliably accessible for search and information retrieval. Furthermore, Natural Language Processing techniques such as text mining, indexing, tagging, information retrieval for online content document processing would be implemented more reliable and efficiently. Overall concepts and design of the authoring system approach is presented in this paper with the different phases involved.