Ahmed Al-Gindy

Bio: Ahmed Al-Gindy is an academic researcher from Ajman University of Science and Technology. The author has contributed to research in topics: Digital watermarking & Watermark. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 18 publications receiving 136 citations. Previous affiliations of Ahmed Al-Gindy include University of Bradford.

Conceptualizing Smart Sustainable Cities: Crossing Visions and Utilizing Resources in Africa

Abstract: Recent advancements in technologies enabled the development of smart cities to be more effective and possible. Smart cities depend on intelligent systems, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, control system, and many more advanced technologies. Sustainability challenges and problems worldwide, with smart and sustainability concepts, reflect almost mutual goals. It includes improving and providing the essential life services for all people efficiently while depending on sustainable, clean, and renewable energy with considerations of different economic, educational, health, social and environmental aspects in the city. In this research, a cost analysis process has been implemented to ease the implementation and resource utilization of smart and sustainable cities in Africa. The challenges and difficulties of those implementations are summarized.

A new watermarking scheme for digital videos using DCT

Abstract: Abstract With the advent of high-speed broadband Internet access, the need to protect digital videos is highly recommended. The main objective of this study is to propose an adaptive algorithm for watermarked digital videos in the frequency domain based on discrete cosine transform (DCT). The watermark signature image is embedded into the whole frame of the video. The green channel of the RGB frame is selected for the embedding process using the DCT algorithm as it shows the recommended quality of the watermarked frames. The experiment results indicate that the proposed algorithm shows robustness and high quality of the watermarked videos by testing various strength values ∆ for different videos. It offers resistance against different types of attacks.

Two Levels Block Based Wavelet Watermarking Algorithm For Still Colour Images.

Abstract: A robust watermarking technique is implemented for copyright protection. The proposed method is based on 2-level discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The embedded watermarking information is a mobile phone number including the international code. The first level of the DWT transformation is applied on 16×16 blocks of the host image. All the coefficients of the 8×8 low-low (LL1) first level sub-band are grouped into one matrix. The second level of the DWT is then applied to the grouped matrix from the first level transformation. The highest coefficient from the LL2 sub-band (4×4) is used for embedding the watermark information. The extracting process is blind since it does not require the original image at the receiver side. The distortion in the host image due to the watermarking process is minimal and the PSNR is greater than 60 dB. The proposed algorithm showed robustness against several attacks such as scaling, filtering, cropping, additive noise and JPEG compression.

Two Levels Block Based Wavelet Watermarking Algorithm for Still Colour Images

Abstract: A robust watermarking technique is implemented for copyright protection. The proposed method is based on 2-level discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The embedded watermarking information is a mobile phone number including the international code. The first level of the DWT transformation is applied on 16×16 blocks of the host image. All the coefficients of the 8×8 low-low (LL1) first level sub-band are grouped into one matrix. The second level of the DWT is then applied to the grouped matrix from the first level transformation. The highest coefficient from the LL2 sub-band (4×4) is used for embedding the watermark information. The extracting process is blind since it does not require the original image at the receiver side. The distortion in the host image due to the watermarking process is minimal and the PSNR is greater than 60 dB. The proposed algorithm showed robustness against several attacks such as scaling, filtering, cropping, additive noise and JPEG compression.

Attackmark: A Tool for Generating Attacks on Watermarking Algorithms

Abstract: A new evaluation tool for generating attacks on watermarking algorithms is proposed. The tool is implemented for digital still images but additional attacks for audio or video can be added in the test environment continuously. The implemented tool is comprised of 23 different attacks using a graphical user interface (GUI) to open, select, attack, evaluate, and display the results of both the original and attacked image in ease. It permits user to select any desirable image and perform all aforementioned attacks simultaneously allowing the user to enter or select attack strength parameters. User can also select individual modified images and perform any required changes to the attacked image by adjusting parameters without affecting other attacked images in the scheme. The execution process is performed at a high speed. The tool is much easier for end-users to understand and learn than other traditional tools that need commands to be known or memorized.

A Video Watermarking Technique Based on Pseudo-3-D DCT and Quantization Index Modulation

Abstract: The increasing popularity of the internet means that digital multimedia are transmitted more rapidly and easily. And people are very aware for media ownership. However, digital watermarking is an efficient and promising means to protect intellectual properties. Based on the intellectual property attention in the information era, how to protect the personal ownership is extremely important and a necessary scheme. In this paper, we propose an effective video watermarking method based on a pseudo-3-D discrete cosine transform (DCT) and quantization index modulation (QIM) against several attacks. The watermark is mainly inserted into the uncompressed domain by adjusting the correlation between DCT coefficients of the selected blocks, and the watermark extraction is blind. This approach consists of a pseudo-3-D DCT, watermark embedding, and extraction. A pseudo-3-D DCT, which is taken DCT transformation twice, will be first utilized to calculate the embedding factor and to obtain the useful messages. Using the QIM, we embed the watermark into the quantization regions from the successive raw frames in the uncompressed domain and record the relative information to create a secret embedding key. This secret embedding key will further apply to extraction. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can survive filtering, compressions, luminance change, and noise attacks with a good invisibility and robustness.

Blind Image Watermark Detection Algorithm Based on Discrete Shearlet Transform Using Statistical Decision Theory

Abstract: Blind watermarking targets the challenging recovery of the watermark when the host is not available during the detection stage. This paper proposes Discrete Shearlet Transform (DST) as a new embedding domain for blind image watermarking. Our novel DST blind watermark detection system uses a nonadditive scheme based on the statistical decision theory. It first computes the Probability Density Function (PDF) of the DST coefficients modeled as a Laplacian distribution. The resulting likelihood ratio is compared with a decision threshold calculated using Neyman–Pearson criterion to minimize the missed detection subject to a fixed false alarm probability. Our method is evaluated in terms of imperceptibility, robustness, and payload against different attacks (Gaussian noise, blurring, cropping, compression, and rotation) using 30 standard grayscale images covering different characteristics (smooth, more complex with a lot of edges, and high detail textured regions). The proposed method shows greater windowing flexibility with more sensitive to directional and anisotropic features when compared against discrete wavelet and contourlets.

A Robust Watermarking Scheme in YCbCr Color Space Based on Channel Coding

Abstract: The rapid development of big data and cloud computing technologies greatly accelerate the spreading and utilization of images and videos. The copyright protection for images and videos is becoming increasingly serious. In this paper, we proposed the robust non-blind watermarking schemes in YCbCr color space based on channel coding. The source watermark image is encoded and singular value decomposed. Subsequently, the singular value matrixes are embedded into the Y, Cb, and Cr components of the host image after four-level discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The embedding factor for each component is calculated based on the just-noticeable distortion and the singular vectors of HL subband of DWT. The peak signal-to-noise ratio of the watermarked image and the normalized correlation coefficient of the extracted watermark are investigated. It is shown that the proposed channel coding-based schemes can achieve near exact watermark recovery against all kinds of attacks. Considering both robustness and transparency, the convolutional code-based additive embedding scheme is optimal, which can also achieve good performance for video watermarking after extension.