Samira Afzal

Samira Afzal

Ph.D. Graduate in Electrical Engineering

samira [at] dca.fee.unicamp.br

CV Lattes

PhD thesis
Short Bio

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering Polytechnic School, University of Sao Paulo (USP) since FEB 2019.  I am a member of “Integrated Systems Laboratory” under the supervision of prof. Marcelo Knorich Zuffo.

I graduated my Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (FEEC), University of Campinas (UNICAMP), in November 2019. My thesis entitled “CAPA: Content-Aware and Path-Aware Scheduling Strategy for Wireless Video Streaming” under the supervision of Prof. Christian Rothenberg. My research was carried in collaboration with Samsung Research under the technical lead of Dr. Vanessa Testoni. During my Ph.D., I had a deep investigation in multipath strategies for mobile and wireless networks suitable to the MPEG Media Transport (MMT) protocol. I received my master’s degree in IT engineering at Sharif University of Technology (SUT) in 2011. My master thesis entitled ” Accurate and Low-Cost Location Estimation Using Machine Learning Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks ” under the supervision of Prof. Hamid Beigy, researching deeply on wireless sensor networks, localization algorithms, and machine learning approaches.

Research Interests
  • 5G technology, Cloud, Edge and Fog computing
  • Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)
  • Mobile video streaming, video standards including codecs and network transport protocols (e.g., MMT, DASH, MPTCP, QUIC)
  • Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
  • Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).
Standardization Effort
  • Contribution to the MMT standard: ISO / IEC JTC 1 / SC 29 N17977 ISO / IEC 23008-13 4th Edition MPEG Media Transport Implementation Guideline (IG)
Patents
  • OLIVEIRA J. F.; AFZAL, S.; TESTONI, V. Método para Transmissão de Vídeo Digital Adotando Estratégias de Escalonamento com Reconhecimento de Percurso e Conteúdo em Redes Heterogêneas usando Protocolo MMT. 2018. INPI BR 10 2018 070605 5.
  • OLIVEIRA J. F.; AFZAL, S.; TESTONI, V. Method for Digital Video Transmission Adopting Packaging Forwarding Strategies with Path and Content Monitoring in Heterogeneous Networks Using MMT Protocol, Method for Reception and Communication System. 2019. US Patent 16387249.
Publications

2020

  • L. Costa, S. Afzal, p. Calcina-Ccori, Geovane Fedrescheski, M. Zuffo, ‘Collaborative Mobile Surveillance System for Smart
    Cities” submitted in 7th Annual Conf. on Computational Science & Computational Intelligence (CSCI’20).

Authors: Type:

2023

  • [PDF] [DOI] S. Afzal, V. Testoni, C. E. Rothenberg, P. Kolan, and I. Bouazizi, “A holistic survey of multipath wireless video streaming,” Journal of network and computer applications, vol. 212, p. 103581, 2023.
    [Bibtex] 
    @article{holisticvideo,
title = {A holistic survey of multipath wireless video streaming},
journal = {Journal of Network and Computer Applications},
volume = {212},
pages = {103581},
year = {2023},
issn = {1084-8045},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2022.103581},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1084804522002223},
author = {Samira Afzal and Vanessa Testoni and Christian Esteve Rothenberg and Prakash Kolan and Imed Bouazizi},
keywords = {Wireless video streaming, Multipath routing, Packet scheduling, Heterogeneous networks},
abstract = {Demand for wireless video streaming services increases with users expecting to access high-quality video streaming experiences. Ensuring Quality of Experience (QoE) is quite challenging due to varying bandwidth and time constraints. Since most of today’s mobile devices are equipped with multiple network interfaces, one promising approach is to benefit from multipath communications. Multipathing leads to higher aggregate bandwidth and distributing video traffic over multiple network paths improves stability, seamless connectivity, and QoE. However, most of current transport protocols do not match the requirements of video streaming applications or are not designed to address relevant issues, such as networks heterogeneity, head-of-line blocking, and delay constraints. In this comprehensive survey, we first review video streaming standards and technology developments. We then discuss the benefits and challenges of multipath video transmission over wireless. We provide a holistic literature review of multipath wireless video streaming, shedding light on the different alternatives from an end-to-end layered stack perspective, reviewing key multipath wireless scheduling functions, unveiling trade-offs of each approach, and presenting a suitable taxonomy to classify the state-of-the-art. Finally, we discuss open issues and avenues for future work.}
}

2021

  • [PDF] S. Afzal, C. E. Rothenberg, V. Testoni, P. Kolan, and I. Bouazizi, “Multipath MMT-based approach for streaming high quality video over multiple wireless access networks,” Computer networks, p. 107638, 2021.
    [Bibtex] 
    @article{afzal2020multipath,
title={{Multipath MMT-based approach for streaming high quality video
over multiple wireless access networks}},
author={Afzal, Samira and Rothenberg, Christian Esteve and Testoni,
Vanessa and Kolan, Prakash and Bouazizi, Imed},
journal={Computer Networks},
pages={107638},
year={2021},
publisher={Elsevier}
}

2018

  • [PDF] S. Afzal, V. Testoni, J. F. de Oliveira, C. E. Rothenberg, P. Kolan, and I. Bouazizi, “A novel scheduling strategy for MMT-based multipath video streaming,” in 2018 IEEE Global Communications Conference: communication qos, reliability and modeling (Globecom2018 CQRM), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2018.
    [Bibtex] 
    @INPROCEEDINGS{afzal2018scheduling,
AUTHOR="Samira Afzal and Vanessa Testoni and Jean Felipe {de Oliveira} and
Christian Esteve Rothenberg and Prakash Kolan and Imed Bouazizi",
TITLE="A Novel Scheduling Strategy for {MMT-based} Multipath Video Streaming",
BOOKTITLE="2018 {IEEE Global Communications Conference}: Communication QoS, Reliability
and Modeling {(Globecom2018 CQRM)}",
ADDRESS="Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates",
DAYS=8,
MONTH=dec,
YEAR=2018,
KEYWORDS="Video streaming; MMT protocol; multipath streaming; path-and-content-aware
scheduling"}

2015

  • [PDF] [DOI] R. D. R. Fontes, S. Afzal, S. H. Brito, M. A. Santos, and C. E. Rothenberg, “Mininet-WiFi: Emulating software-defined wireless networks,” in Proceedings of the 2015 11th international conference on network and service management (CNSM), Washington, DC, USA, 2015, p. 384–389.
    [Bibtex] 
    @inproceedings{fontes2015mininet,
title={{Mininet-WiFi: Emulating software-defined wireless networks}},
author={Fontes, Ramon Dos Reis and Afzal, Samira and Brito, Samuel HB and Santos, Mateus AS and Rothenberg, Christian Esteve},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2015 11th International Conference on Network and Service Management {(CNSM)}},
series = {CNSM '15},
year = {2015},
isbn = {978-3-9018-8277-7},
pages = {384--389},
numpages = {6},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/CNSM.2015.7367387},
doi = {10.1109/CNSM.2015.7367387},
acmid = {2879040},
publisher = {{IEEE} Computer Society},
address = {Washington, DC, USA},
}

2014

    • S.Afzal, H.Beigy. “A localization algorithm for large scale mobile wireless sensor networks: a learning approach.” The Journal of Supercomputing 69.1 (2014): 98-120.

2012

  • S.Afzal “Localization algorithm for large scale mobile wireless sensor networks.” Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research 2.8 (2012): 7589-7596.
  • S.Afzal “A review of localization techniques for wireless sensor networks.” Text Road Publication ISSN (2012): 2090-4304.