Syed Abdul Rahman Al-Haddad

An overview of digital speech watermarking

Digital speech watermarking is a robust way to hide and thus secure data like audio and video from any intentional or unintentional manipulation through transmission. In terms of some signal characteristics including bandwidth, voice/non-voice and production model, digital speech signal is different from audio, music and other signals. Although, various review articles on image, audio and video watermarking are available, there are still few review papers on digital speech watermarking. Therefore this article presents an overview of digital speech watermarking including issues of robustness, capacity and imperceptibility. Other issues discussed are types of digital speech watermarking, application, models and masking methods. This article further highlights the related challenges in the real world, research opportunities and future works in this area, yet to be explored fully.

Decision Fusion for Isolated Malay Digit Recognition Using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and Hidden Markov Model (HMM)

This paper is focused on Malay speech recognition with the intention to introduce a decision fusion technique for isolated Malay digit recognition using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and Hidden Markov Model (HMM). This study proposes an algorithm for decision fusion of the recognition models. The endpoint detection, framing, normalization, Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) and vector quantization techniques are used to process speech samples to accomplish the recognition. Decision fusion technique is then used to combine the results of DTW and HMM. The algorithm is tested on speech samples that is a part of a Malay corpus.

Robust Digital Speech Watermarking For Online Speaker Recognition

A robust and blind digital speech watermarking technique has been proposed for online speaker recognition systems based on Discrete Wavelet Packet Transform (DWPT) and multiplication to embed the watermark in the amplitudes of the wavelet’s subbands. In order to minimize the degradation effect of the watermark, these subbands are selected where less speaker-specific information was available (500 Hz–3500 Hz and 6000 Hz–7000 Hz). Experimental results on Texas Instruments Massachusetts Institute of Technology (TIMIT), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Mobile Biometry (MOBIO) show that the degradation for speaker verification and identification is 1.16% and 2.52%, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed watermark technique can provide enough robustness against different signal processing attacks.

A novel clustering algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks based on determination of virtual links' weight to increase network stability.

The stability of clusters is a serious issue in mobile ad hoc networks. Low stability of clusters may lead to rapid failure of clusters, high energy consumption for reclustering, and decrease in the overall network stability in mobile ad hoc network. In order to improve the stability of clusters, weight-based clustering algorithms are utilized. However, these algorithms only use limited features of the nodes. Thus, they decrease the weight accuracy in determining nodes competency and lead to incorrect selection of cluster heads. A new weight-based algorithm presented in this paper not only determines nodes weight using its own features, but also considers the direct effect of feature of adjacent nodes. It determines the weight of virtual links between nodes and the effect of the weights on determining nodes final weight. By using this strategy, the highest weight is assigned to the best choices for being the cluster heads and the accuracy of nodes selection increases. The performance of new algorithm is analyzed by using computer simulation. The results show that produced clusters have longer lifetime and higher stability. Mathematical simulation shows that this algorithm has high availability in case of failure.

Denoising of natural images through robust wavelet thresholding and genetic programming

Digital images play an essential role in analysis tasks that can be applied in various knowledge domains, including medicine, meteorology, geology, and biology. Such images can be degraded by noise during the process of acquisition, transmission, storage, or compression. The use of local filters in image restoration may generate artifacts when these filters are not well adapted to the image content as a result of the heuristic optimization of local filters. Denoising methods based on learning procedure are more capable than parametric filters for addressing the conflicts between noise suppression and artifact reduction. In this study, we present a nonlinear filtering method based on a two-step switching scheme to remove both salt-and-pepper and additive white Gaussian noises. In the switching scheme, two cascaded detectors are used to detect noise, and two corresponding estimators are employed to effectively and efficiently filter the noise in an image. In the process of training, a method according to patch clustering is utilized, and genetic programming (GP) is subsequently applied to determine the optimum filter (wavelet-domain filter) for each individual cluster, while in testing part, the optimum filter trained beforehand by GP is recovered and used on the inputted corrupted patch. This adaptive structure is employed to cope with several noise types. Experimental and comparative analysis results show that the denoising performance of the proposed method is superior to that of existing denoising methods as per both quantitative and qualitative assessments.

Multi-factor authentication model based on multipurpose speech watermarking and online speaker recognition

In this paper, a Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) method is developed by a combination of Personal Identification Number (PIN), One Time Password (OTP), and speaker biometric through the speech watermarks. For this reason, a multipurpose digital speech watermarking applied to embed semi-fragile and robust watermarks simultaneously in the speech signal, respectively to provide tamper detection and proof of ownership. Similarly, the blind semi-fragile speech watermarking technique, Discrete Wavelet Packet Transform (DWPT) and Quantization Index Modulation (QIM) are used to embed the watermark in an angle of the wavelet’s sub-bands where more speaker specific information is available. For copyright protection of the speech, a blind and robust speech watermarking are used by applying DWPT and multiplication. Where less speaker specific information is available the robust watermark is embedded through manipulating the amplitude of the wavelet’s sub-bands. Experimental results on TIMIT, MIT, and MOBIO demonstrate that there is a trade-off among recognition performance of speaker recognition systems, robustness, and capacity which are presented by various triangles. Furthermore, threat model and attack analysis are used to evaluate the feasibility of the developed MFA model. Accordingly, the developed MFA model is able to enhance the security of the systems against spoofing and communication attacks while improving the recognition performance via solving problems and overcoming limitations.

An effective approach for managing power consumption in cloud computing infrastructure

Cloud computing offers a dynamic provisioning of server capabilities as a scalable virtualized service. Big datacenters which deliver cloud computing services consume a lot of power. This results in high operational cost and large carbon emission. One way to lower power consumption without affecting the cloud services quality is to consolidate resources for reducing power. In this paper, we introduce a DNA-based Fuzzy Genetic Algorithm (DFGA) that employs DNA-based scheduling strategies to reduce power consumption in cloud datacenters. It is a power-aware architecture for managing power consumption in the cloud computing infrastructure. We also identify the performances metrics that are needed to evaluate the proposed work performance. The experimental results show that DFGA reduced power consumption when comparing with other algorithms. Our proposed work deals with real time task which is not static, and concentrates on the dynamic users since they are involved in cloud.

Multiclass Support Vector Machines for Classification of ECG Data with Missing Values

The article presents an experimental study on multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM) methods over a cardiac arrhythmia dataset that has missing attribute values for electrocardiogram (ECG) diagnostic application. The presence of an incomplete dataset and high data dimensionality can affect the performance of classifiers. Imputation of missing data and discriminant analysis are commonly used as preprocessing techniques in such large datasets. The article proposes experiments to evaluate performance of One-Against-All (OAA) and One-Against-One (OAO) approaches in kernel multiclass SVM for a heartbeat classification problem with imputation and dimension reduction techniques. The results indicate that the OAA approach has superiority over OAO in multiclass SVM for ECG data analysis with missing values.

Distant Speaker Recognition: An Overview

Distant speaker recognition (DSR) system assumes the microphones are far away from the speaker’s mouth. Also, the position of microphones can vary. Furthermore, various challenges and limitation in terms of coloration, ambient noise and reverberation can bring some difficulties for recognition of the speaker. Although, applying speech enhancement techniques can attenuate speech distortion components, it may remove speaker-specific information and increase the processing time in real-time application. Currently, many efforts have been investigated to develop DSR for commercial viable systems. In this paper, state-of-the-art techniques in DSR such as robust feature extraction, feature normalization, robust speaker modeling, model compensation, dereverberation and score normalization are discussed to overcome the speech degradation components i.e., reverberation and ambient noise. Performance results on DSR show that whenever speaker to microphone distant increases, recognition rates decreases and equal erro...

An efficient Markov model for reliability analysis of predictive hybrid m-out-of-n systems

In this paper, predictive hybrid redundancy has been extended to large-scale control systems comprising n modules. In m-out-of-n systems, if m-out-of-n modules are in agreement, the system can report consensus; otherwise the system fails. While in our new extension, if there is no agreement, a history record of previous successful result(s) is used to predict the output. In order to analyze the reliability of this system, we present a Markov model based on which the reliability has been computed and compared with m-out-of-n redundancy. The results of simulation demonstrated that the new redundancy improves overall system reliability in all examined scenarios, especially when the number m is large.