An optimized SDN framework for the internet of things

Published in: Discover Computing

Feb 01, 2026

Zina Houhamdi Mohamed Raid Athamena Belkacem Athamena Shorouq Eletter

Low-power wireless networks (LPWN) have traditionally been central to the Internet of Things (IoT) discussion. Nevertheless, as these networks grow more complex, their control architectures and protocols reveal significant limitations, particularly when dealing with multi–hop topologies and lossy channels. To tackle these challenges, there has been growing interest in adopting Software–Defined Networking (SDN), which has revolutionized data center and campus network management over the past decade by moving away from traditional vertical infrastructure. Despite its advantages, the centralized SDN model encounters substantial difficulties in the restricted settings of LPWN. The current study investigates the application of SDN concepts to dynamically and flexibly control Industrial IoT, with a focus on minimizing and managing SDN overhead. This paper presents a novel SDN architecture, Optimized SDN (OSDN), specifically designed for LPWN, along with simulated, experimental, and analytical findings. The results highlight that OSDN meets the diverse and complex traffic demands of Industrial IoT applications throughout LPWN and that challenges in integrating SDN in limited IoT networks can be successfully addressed. The key contribution of this study is enabling SDN-style programmability on highly resource-constrained IoT devices through a lightweight control protocol and overhead-reduction mechanisms, offering flexibility and control without compromising compatibility or performance.

Automatic speech emotion recognition for arabic dialects: a new dataset and machine learning framework

Published in: Cluster Computing

Jan 01, 2026

Zineddine Sarhani Kahhoul Nadjiba Terki Habiba Dahmani Belkacem Athamena Zina Houhamdi Madina Hamiane Mohammed Bourennane

Automatic Speech Emotion Recognition (ASER) is a critical aspect of affective computing, which detects emotions in speech to facilitate efficient human-computer interaction. An area that has received little attention in previous research is the Algerian Arabic dialect, which is the setting in which this study examines ASER. We introduce a new corpus, Open Your Heart (OYH), which consists of roughly 6.3 hours of emotional spontaneous speech taken from a talk show on television. A wide variety of emotional expressions are captured in the 6,167 audio clips from 43 male and female speakers that make up the dataset. These expressions are categorized and analyzed through the Geneva Wheel of Emotions (GWE), providing an in-depth understanding of the emotional spectrum. We use the openSMILE toolkit to pull out audio features, then choose the best ones using the Backward Feature Elimination (BFE) method and an improved version that removes the least useful features to make the feature set better. We employ Support Vector Machines (SVM) as the primary classification model, alongside ten additional machine learning classifiers. We assess each model using different numbers of estimators. Among all classifiers, SVM achieves the highest performance, reaching a maximum accuracy of approximately 59% with a complexity of 0.00001. These findings surpass previous benchmarks, demonstrating the robustness of the proposed methodology for emotion recognition in Arabic speech.

Supplier selection strategies evaluation: a multi-agent based simulation

Published in: International Journal of Economics and Business Research

Jun 01, 2025

Belkacem Athamena Zina Houhamdi Mohamed Raid Athamena Ghaleb Elrefae Kholoud Al Qeisi

Local food systems have gained prominence in response to increasing consumer demand for locally produced food, driven by heightened interest in diet, food quality, sourcing, production methods, and food safety. These systems support the economic sustainability of small and medium-sized farms and promote consumer awareness through enhanced transparency and direct farmer-customer relationships. However, the effectiveness of these systems depends on robust and efficient supply chain operations, which are often hindered by the limited adoption of formal supply chain management practices. This study investigates the impact of farmers' local food system selection strategies and evaluates key performance metrics relevant to supplier assessment in local food networks. A theoretical multi-agent model was developed using NetLogo to simulate local food systems and analyse decision-making processes. Furthermore, this paper introduces an extended G-net model that integrates inheritance mechanisms into the G-net formalism, thereby enabling formal design and analysis of concurrent object-oriented systems. The proposed model preserves the foundational structure of Petri Nets, facilitating the use of existing analysis tools for simulation and verification. A case study is provided to demonstrate the model's utility; however, further empirical research is necessary to validate its practical application.

Inheritance Modeling in Distributed Object-Oriented Design: An Extended G-Nets Model

Published in: TEM Journal

May 01, 2025

Zina Houhamdi Mohamed Raid Athamena Belkacem Athamena

The emergence of an object-oriented paradigm has been beneficial for complex software development, and this paradigm has been used to develop architectures for distributed systems. Many object-oriented architectures have been suggested for developing object-based software, and several attempts have been made to specify object behaviors formally. Nevertheless, investigations into bridging the gap between object implementation and object formal models are limited. This paper presents a formal approach to designing and implementing object-oriented software. Rather than applying formal methods only in the specification phase, the proposed model applies formal methods in the design phase that extends the well–known–net formalism (abstract Petri nets) to support system modeling as a set of independent and low-coupled modules. This paper describes the extension of standard G-nets to model class and inheritance in true parallel object-oriented design and incorporates the inheritance mechanism in G-nets. This paper investigates the problems related to inheritance anomaly in designing distributed object-oriented to analyze the proposed model. Consequently, the proposed formalism formally and explicitly models the inheritance in the G-net to preserve the basic Petri net model and exploit the Petri net tools for analyzing and simulating concurrent object-oriented design. An example is given to illustrate a detailed analysis of the proposed formalism; however, real experimental research is required to validate the practical significance of the presented approach.

Retention contracts with asymmetric information: optimistic approach vs pessimistic approach

Published in: Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting

Jan 01, 2023

Belkacem Athamena Zina houhamdi Ghaleb El Refae

This paper aims to focus on the utilization of retention contracts to screen and discipline managers in a context in which the council, board of directors, possesses incomplete information about the consequences of managers’ decisions. The analysis enlightens us on empire building, on the slight connection between achievement and firing, and describes concerns about the belief that low achievements result from bad managers. Design/methodology/approach This paper analyzes a basic model to show the resulting dilemmas. The desire to screen managers to enhance the organization's future well-being motivates managers to show their credentials by becoming excessively active. The council can address this bias by firing a manager whose project is proven to ruin value. Moreover, the council can replace the manager if he has implemented a project but its outcomes remain unobservable. Both decisions decrease the attraction to develop loss-generating projects. However, the dismissing decision on either ground will affect the council deduction that the expected competence of the incoming manager is lower than that of the dismissed manager. Findings This study shows in which situation the selection option is preferred over the disciplining option using two different retention contracts: optimistic contract and pessimistic contract. Originality/value This study shows in which situation the selection option is preferred over the disciplining option using two different retention contracts: optimistic contract and pessimistic contract.

Formal Approach to Data Accuracy Evaluation

Published in: Informatica

Jun 01, 2022

Belkacem Athamena Zina houhamdi

Usually, data quality is defined by multiple attributes that allow classifying the output data (such as completeness, freshness, and accuracy) or the methods exploiting these data (such as dependability, performance, and protection). Among the suggested quality attributes, we will discuss one of the principal categories: data accuracy. Scientific experiments, decisionmaking, and data retrieval are examples of situations that require a formal evaluation approach to data accuracy. The evaluation approach should be adaptable to distinct understandings of data accuracy and distinct enduser expectations. This study investigates data accuracy and defines dimensions and metrics that affect its evaluation. The investigation of data accuracy generates problems in the user expectation specification and database quality models. This work describes our proposed approach for data accuracy evaluation by defining an evaluation algorithm that considers the distribution of inaccuracies in database relations. The approach decomposes the query output in accordance with data accuracy, labels every part with its accuracy value, and addresses the possibility of enforcing data accuracy by using these values. This study mainly contributes by proposing an explicit evaluation of quality attributes of data accuracy, a formal evaluation approach to data accuracy, and suggesting some improvement actions to reinforce data accuracy.

Retention Contracts under Partial Information Electoral Competition Case Study

Published in: International Arab Journal of Information Technology

Apr 01, 2022

Zina Houhamdi Belkacem Athamena Ghaleb El Refae

This study copes with a class of principal-agent problems where information asymmetry represents an important characteristic. The paper examines the relationship between the principal and agents. The principal has to perform two agents’ screening and discipline tasks. To complete his duties, the principal lacks complete information concerning the agents’ behavior and rarely has partial information regarding the failure or success of launched tactics, alliances, rationalization, etc. We analyze the type of retention contracts (implicit) used by the principal to replace or retain agents. Consistent with literature findings, we demonstrated that agents could be extremely active in showing their competencies; the relationship between dismissal and bad performance is invalid; and occasionally, the principal dismisses qualified agents. Then we determined the rules under which electorates urge political parties to acquire information and choose optimal policies from the voter’s viewpoint.

Prediction Process in Multi-Agent System Online Monitoring: Centralized and Distributed Approaches

Published in: TEM Journal

May 01, 2019

Zina houhamdi

This paper discusses the prediction process, which is the main step of the online monitoring process for a multi-agent plan. The monitoring process uses a relational model to estimate the internal status of the system, which is dynamic (changes over time). Unfortunately, the agents have partial observability of the environment; thus, the monitoring process cannot accurately determine the system status (known in the literature as belief state) at any instant. The prediction process is composed of two stages: a simulation stage (prediction of all possible system states at the succeeding time) and a clipping stage (elimination of states that are incompatible with the observations or with the constraints from predicted system states).

A Multi-Agent System for Course Timetable Generation

Published in: TEM Journal

Mar 01, 2019

Zina houhamdi Belkacem Athamena

In the university, course scheduling and preparation for each semester can be defined as the process of determining what courses to offer, the number of sections needed for each course, assigning of a faculty member to teach each section, and allocating a timeslot and a classroom for each section to avoid clashes. The output of this activity (which is a timetable) affects every faculty member and student in various departments. This process is essentially broken down into three main stages: determining the courses to be offered as well as their section numbers, assigning faculty members to different sections, and scheduling of the sections into timeslots and classrooms.This paper investigates each of these steps and congregates them in a scheduling and Decision Support System (DSS). The DSS is used to make easy the process of course offerings by taking into consideration the students’ suggestions because the department resources are limited. The faculty member preferences are also considered in the assignment of sections for the sake of lessening disappointments in the department. Also, the couples (faculty, section) are planned into university timeslots based on faculty member preferences. Our proposed system considers student suggestions and preferences and the time availability of a faculty member since it minimizes disappointments and avoids conflicts between faculty members and classrooms and courses.

Impacts of information quality on decision-making

Published in: Global Business and Economics Review

Jan 01, 2019

Zina houhamdi Belkacem Athamena

Prior investigations have pointed out that an understanding of the impacts of information quality is essential to the organisation's success. Nevertheless, few investigations have analysed the impacts of information quality in a business context. This paper analyses the impacts of information quality on the decision-making process in a systematic way. To reach this goal, we suggest a pragmatic approach that allows estimation of information quality categories and dimensions. The results of the proposed approach indicate that intrinsic and contextual categories of information quality affect decision quality in a positive manner. On the other hand, decision quality is not necessarily influenced by representational category of the information quality. Additionally, the findings suggest that, contrary to consistency, increased information completeness and accuracy significantly improves the quality of the decision. Consequently, not all of the categories of information quality have the same effectiveness for the amelioration of decision quality.

Model for Decision-Making Process with Big Data

Published in: Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology

Sep 30, 2018

Belkacem Athamena Zina houhamdi

Currently, Big Data is an important concept due to the pervasive use of electronic devices, computerization, and information sharing worldwide. Despite the focus on Big Data, studies lack an explicit definition of the Big Data concept. Big Data is assumed to present natural solutions to government and private sectors, but the practical results of Big Data in other sectors are still unknown. This paper discusses Big Data concerning two perspectives: decision-making process and knowledge creation theory. The main finding of this investigation is that Big Data represents an exceptional source to generate new knowledge that supports the decision-making process in companies.

An execution model for exception handling in a multi-agent system

Published in: Conference on Modeling and Applied Simulation (MAS2017)

Sep 01, 2017

Belkacem Athamena Zina houhamdi

Data freshness evaluation in data integration systems

Published in: International Journal of Economics and Business Research

Mar 14, 2016

Zina houhamdi Belkacem Athamena

The availability of data in different datasources increases highly the demand on accessing this data in a uniform and generalised way, especially in decision making applications which require an exhaustive investigation and examination of the data. The data quality represents an essential characteristic requested by the users, particularity with the arrival of the data integration systems (DIS) which integrate data from multiple datasources and present them to the users as single database. This paper discusses the data quality evaluation in DIS systems. Precisely, it addresses the issues of the quality evaluation of the data delivered to the end users as results to their queries and the verification of the achievement of users' quality expectations. Besides, it analyses how to improve the DIS systems by using quality scales and to enforce data quality. We propose to study one quality attribute, to analyse its effect in a DIS system, and to suggest methods for its assessment. Between the quality attributes that have been defined, this paper investigates the more significant one which is data freshness.

A distributed approach for multi-agent plan monitorine and diagnosis

Published in: SAI Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys)

Nov 10, 2015

Belkacem Athamena Zina houhamdi

Information quality framework

Published in: GLOBAL BUSINESS & ECONOMICS ANTHOLOGY

Mar 01, 2015

Zina houhamdi Belkacem Athamena

This paper discusses a general, meaningful and repeated problem in information systems practice: under investment in the client information quality. Many organizations need precise financial models so as to initiate investments in their information systems and associated processes. Nevertheless, there are no broadly recognized strategies to accurately combining the expenses and profits of potential quality enhancement to client information. This can result in inadequate quality client information which influences the organizational goals. Further, the absence of such a strategy impedes the ability for Information System (IS) developers to discuss the investing case in betterments since the organizational resources access is dependent on such a case being made. To address this problem, we propose and assess a structure for generating financial models of the expenses and profits of client information quality. These models can be exploited to select and prioritize from various candidate interventions across multiple client processes and information resources, and to set up a business case for the society to make the investment. As the work tried to provide and evaluate an artifact instead of answer a question, design science was identified as the most suitable research approach. With design science, utility of a conceived artifact is precisely established as the goal rather than the theory truth. So instead of following a process of expressing and answering a sequence of research questions, design science develops by constructing and evaluating an artifact. In this case, the framework is built as an abstract artifact, incorporating models, measures and a method.

Ontology-based Knowledge Management

Published in: International Journal of Engineering and Technology

Jan 01, 2015

Zina houhamdi Belkacem Athamena

It is recognized that knowledge has a considerable usefulness in people's daily life and all businesses. The current paper discusses a knowledge description using ontology and its application in Multi Agent Systems (MAS). The presented work proposes to reach a powerful relationship between MAS and Knowledge Management (KM), principally by introducing results achieved in the semantic web domain to MAS. The proposed method is to apply KM in MAS using ontology, wherever undetermined knowledge is absent. This is an appropriate model for various cases particularly when we require experience management.

Structured system test suite generation process for multi-agent system

Published in: International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering

Apr 01, 2014

Zina houhamdi Belkacem Athamena

In recent years, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies are proposed to develop complex distributed systems based upon the agent paradigm. The implementation for such systems has usually the form of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). MAS’testing is a challenging task because these systems are often programmed to be autonomous and deliberative, and they operate in an open world, which requires context awareness. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for goal-oriented software system testing. It specifies a testing process that complements the goal oriented methodology Tropos and reinforces the mutual relationship between goal analysis and testing. Furthermore, it defines a structured and comprehensive system test suite derivation process for engineering software agents by providing a systematic way of deriving test cases from goal analysis.

A Petri Net Based Multi-Agent System Behavioral Testing

Published in: Canadian Center of Science and Education (CCSE)

Mar 01, 2012

Belkacem Athamena Zina houhamdi

In Multi-Agent System (MAS), developers concentrate on creating design models and evolving them, from higher level models to lower level models, in several steps. Considerable part of MAS implementations is automatically produced from the design models. If a design model contains faults, they are passed to the generated implementations. Practical model validation techniques are required to discover and delete faults in abstract design models. In this paper, we introduce a formal approach for MAS design testing. It specifies a testing process that complements Multi-agent Systems Engineering (MaSE) methodology and strengthens the mutual relationship between UML and MAS. Besides, it defines a structured and comprehensive testing process for engineering software agents at the design level by providing a systematic way of converting the MAS design models to UML design diagram. Then a Petri Net (PN) diagram is generated from the UML models to simulate the behavior of the MAS system. Finally, because Petri Nets (PNs) are formal models, their analysis techniques can be applied to automatic MAS behavioral testing.

Structured Acceptance Test Suite Generation Process for Multi-Agent System

Published in: Computer and Information Science

Jan 01, 2012

Belkacem Athamena Zina houhamdi

In recent years, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies are proposed to develop complex distributed systems based upon the agent paradigm. The implementation for such systems has usually the form of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Testing of MAS is a challenging task because these systems are often programmed to be autonomous and deliberative, and they operate in an open world, which requires context awareness. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for goal-oriented software acceptance testing. It specifies a testing process that complements the goal oriented methodology Tropos and strengthens the mutual relationship between goal analysis and testing. Furthermore, it defines a structured and comprehensive acceptance testing process for engineering software agents by providing a systematic way of deriving test cases from goal analysis.

A Petri net based agent behavioral testing

Published in: American Journal of Applied Sciences

Jan 01, 2012

Zina houhamdi Belkacem Athamena

In Multi-Agent System (MAS), developers concentrate on creating design models and evolving them, from higher level models to lower level models, in several steps. Considerable part of MAS implementations is automatically produced from the design models. If a design model contains faults, they are passed to the generated implementations. Practical model validation techniques are required to discover and delete faults in abstract design models. We introduce a formal approach for agent design testing. It specifies a testing process that complements Multi-agent Systems Engineering (MaSE) methodology and strengthens the mutual relationship between UML and MAS. Besides, it defines a structured and comprehensive testing process for engineering software agents at the design level by providing a systematic way of converting the MAS design models to UML design diagram. Petri Net (PN) diagram is generated from the UML models to simulate the behavior of an agent. Because Petri Nets (PNs) are formal models, their analysis techniques can be applied to automatic agent behavioral testing.

Test Suite Generation Process for Agent Testing

Published in: Indian Journal of Computer Science and Engineering

May 01, 2011

Zina houhamdi

Software agents are a promising technology for today's complex, distributed systems. Methodologies and techniques that address testing and reliability of multi agent systems are increasingly demanded, in particular to support automated test case generation and execution. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for goal-oriented software agent testing. It specifies a testing process that complements the goal oriented methodology Tropos and reinforces the mutual relationship between goal analysis and testing. Furthermore, it defines a structured and comprehensive agent test suite generation process by providing a systematic way of deriving test cases from goal analysis.

Structured Integration Test Suite Generation Process for Multi-Agent System

Published in: Journal of Computer Science

Feb 01, 2011

Zina houhamdi Belkacem Athamena

In recent years, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies are proposed to develop complex distributed systems based upon the agent paradigm. The implementation for such systems has usually the form of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Testing of MAS is a challenging task because these systems are often programmed to be autonomous and deliberative and they operate in an open world, which requires context awareness. Approach: We introduce a novel approach for goal-oriented software integration testing. It specifies an integration testing process that complements the goal oriented methodology Tropos and strengthens the mutual relationship between goal analysis and testing. Results: The derived test suites from the system goals can be used to observe emergent properties resulting from agent interactions and make sure that a group of agents and contextual resources work correctly together. Conclusion: This approach defines a structured and comprehensive integration test suite derivation process for engineering software agents by providing a systematic way of deriving test cases from goal analysis.

Multi-agent system testing: A survey

Published in: International Journal of Advanced Computer

Dec 01, 2010

Zina houhamdi

In recent years, agent-based systems have received considerable attention in both academics and industry. The agent-oriented paradigm can be considered a natural extension to the object-oriented (OO) paradigm. Agents differ from objects in many issues which require special modeling elements but have some similarities. Although there is a well-defined OO testing technique, agent-oriented development has neither a standard development process nor a standard testing technique. In this paper, we will give an introduction to most recent works presented in the area of testing distributed systems composed of complex autonomous entities (agents). We will provide pointers to work by large players in the field. We will explain why this kind of system must be handled differently than less complex systems.

A reuse description formalism

Published in: ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications

Jun 25, 2001

Zina houhamdi

Software reuse has been claimed to be one of the most promising approaches to enhance programmer productivity and software quality. One of the problems to be addressed to achieve high software reuse is organizing databases of software experience, in which information on software products and processes is stored and organized to enhance reuse. We present a system to define and construct such databases called the Reuse Description Formalism (RDF). The formalism is a generalization of the faceted index approach to classification in the sense that it provides facilities to define facets, terms, and object descriptions. Unlike the faceted approach, objects in RDF can be described in terms of different sets of faceted and in terms of other object descriptions. This allows a software library to contain different classes of objects, to represent various types of relations among these classes, and to refine classification schemes by adding more detail supporting a growing application domain and reducing the impact of initial domain analysis.