Internal projects

Satellite remote sensing (SRS) provides effective way for monitoring large areas without intensive human intervention. However, it cannot be used for applications requiring close monitoring and context detection. On the other hand, traditional sensor networks (SNs) are spreading in countless applications to provide automatic monitoring of objects, human, and/or infrastructure. SNs, however, require permanent deployment of sensors and constant human intervention to manage and maintain. Therefore, since SRS and SNs provide two extremes for surveillance, low-cost Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), called drones, are introduced to provide innovative ways of low altitude sensing with zero deployment. UAVs can provide cost-effective solutions to monitor humans and objects closely and from different angles or altitudes, which facilitates the detection of complex events (e.g. border intrusions) and provides versatility of information not available through traditional solutions. The objective of this project is to design and develop Q-Hummingbirds: a scalable multi-UAV management and control platform to monitor, cover, and detect objects and infrastructure. Such a platform is meant to provide ultimate degrees of freedom and zero-deployment through studying new practices for remote sensing, distributed network coverage, environmental and social, and privacy issues. To that purpose, we propose to develop a proof-of-concept platform of UAV swarm management and control system for monitoring strategic sites (e.g. oil/gas and energy sites). To achieve this goal, we propose to develop a validation platform of flying UAVs, equipped with cameras and other types of sensors, to automatically detect, and possibly predict wear and tear and prioritize parts repairing. Furthermore, the platform can be used to monitor and track moving objects onsite, to help provide first responders of many adverse events such as belch fires and structural failures. Qatar needs to enter the new era of UAV-based technologies to benefit from the potential of such technologies, hence this project will provide more enriched surveillance approaches and cost-effective solutions for energy site monitoring in order to sustain and expand Qatar’s petroleum and natural resources.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the fastest growing markets. IoT may be defined as interconnecting various uniquely addressable objects through communication protocols. IoT has broad applications, including healthcare, smart home, retail, manufacturing, agriculture, education and automation. Forbes reported that Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will exceed 60 trillion in the next 15 years, whereas, 20-30 billion Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) will enter healthcare systems by 2020. The popularity of IoT has attracted the attention of many hackers. In fact, a wide range of IoT devices have been recently attacked and compromised, including IIoT devices, security cameras, smart door locks, etc. For example, on Oct. 21, 2016, a large-scale DDoS attack was launched against Dyn DNS servers in the United States and shut down many web services including Twitter for several hours. The DDoS attack was due to weak authentication and access control of millions of IoT devices (such as security camera, DVR), which were hacked and then used to send the DDoS traffic. In this project, we propose a research program with an overarching goal to develop a framework for securing the IoT devices and systems (including IoT system architecture, security protocols, and evaluation methods), under realistic and IoT-specific adversarial models. Our challenging objectives include: (i) Designing scalable IoT system architecture and trustworthy end-to-end IoT communication protocols; (ii) Devising ARM-TrustZone-based secure IoT system. We will explore trusted boot to design a new secure booting procedure for IoT devices, which does not halt IoT devices when detecting abnormalities; (iii) Developing effective and energy-efficient authentication and intrusion detection schemes using distributed deep learning and Blockchain technologies for IoT devices by utilizing application domain features. The targeted applications include public safety and security, intelligent building and smart home, as well as smart and connected city.

Participating Institutions:

1- Qatar University

2- Hamad Bin Khalifa University

3- university of western Ontario, Canada

Smart health technologies have great potential to improve healthcare services of countless individuals. However, we need to proactively address the technical, social, and ethical challenges appearing with the deployment of such technologies, hence, the potential benefit is not hindered. Privacy and data security are also a bottleneck that play a crucial role in the development of such technologies. Thus, our vision is to provide scalable, secure, and cost-effective healthcare services for the Qatari citizen without even getting to the hospital. Our project goal will be broadly to develop the first Qatar Health Blockchain Network (QHBN), to integrate the power of edge computing for efficient medical data summarization with the blockchain technology for providing secure and policy-driven medical data exchange amongst healthcare stakeholders. We plan to leverage signal processing and machine learning techniques at the edge network for scalable vital sign representation, while providing efficient transport across heterogeneous network technologies for immediate response i.e. minimum delays. We also plan to devise a blockchain framework for secure data exchange, while abiding by policies and regulations of different medical service providers. Hence, driven by dignified progress in computational, analytical, and communication techniques, we believe that we can support a radical improvement in healthcare and quality of life. Furthermore, one of our aims is to support good coordination and collaboration amongst different healthcare stakeholders and national health information systems through developing secure health data sharing system to jointly gather, process, and analyze health-related information. Through this project, we plan to foster the collaboration with the local healthcare stockholders, such as Hamad Medical Corporation, to get access to a wide collection of biomarkers and medical data that will offer new opportunities for addressing local healthcare issues. This will enable us to develop innovative techniques for diagnosis, prognosis, development of follow-up therapeutic strategies for the patients, while focusing on the health priority areas in Qatar, such as diabetes, cancer, and neurological diseases.

Participating Institutions:

1- Qatar University

2- Hamad Medical Corporation