Theological Foundations for Interfaith Dialogue in Islam

According to Qur’an, the difference of opinion among peoples of the world is natural and something that will always be there. However, in order to stop the difference from becoming a conflict, people should hold dialogue. The significance of dialogue in Islam is well understood by the fact that God chose to hold dialogue with angels concerning the creation of man. Furthermore, the Qur’an declares dialogue the greater jihad and arrangement of a successful dialogue is considered as a manifest victory In order to arrange a successful dialogue, Qur’an lays out a number of principles: 1- Dialogue should be held in such a nice way that it may lead the opponent to get a close friend. For this it is necessary to speak mildly and the dialogue must be based on wisdom and sincerity. 2- Dialogue should rest on the principle of mutual respect and should not contain any kind of abusive and taunting language. 3- Dialogue must not override the principle of justice and equality and must not be affected by the past experiences or personal grievances towards the opponent. 4- Dialogue should not address the issue of pulling everyone together, e.g. The opponent (for example a nation) should not be blamed for the evil deeds of few. 5- Dialogue should be held with an attitude that is characterized by patience and tolerance and efforts must be made to keep the vicious elements out from harming the process. 6- Both parties should openly acknowledge and recognize the mutually positive attributes. 7- Imposing one’s opinions upon the opponent must not be the objective of dialogue. 8- Both parties should, despite the inherent difference of opinion, pursue to find practical solutions by striving towards finding a common ground.

Joint Spectrum Sensing and Dynamic in Cognitive Radio Networks

Spectrum sensing and dynamic resource allocation has gained remarkable consideration from research community during the past decade in the field of cognitive radio networks. Moreover, femtocell networks are also an emerging technique which are deployed at homes in order to deal with growing demand of high rate data streaming and good voice quality. Cognitive femtocell incorporates the features of cognitive radios including spectrum sensing and resource allocation in order to mitigate interference and provide better utilization of the valuable licensed spectrum. In this dissertation we have presented certain spectrum sensing and resource allocation techniques in the area of both cognitive radios and cognitive femtocells. This dissertation presents a centralized relay-based spectrum sensing technique using hybrid nature based algorithm that detects the number of active primary users and jointly estimates (amplitude, carrier frequency and direction of Arrival (DOA) of far-field sources impinging on Uniform Linear Arrays (ULA) mounted on each relay. The fitness function is a sum of Mean square error (MSE) and the correlation error. However, the parameters are estimated by using Genetic Algorithm (GA) hybridized with Pattern Search (PS). Furthermore, an OFDM system with multiple users having heterogeneous traffic requirements is inspected. The goal is to simultaneously, maximize the capacity of all the Secondary User Equipment (SUE) with non-real traffic and to fulfill the minimum data rate requirement of real time SUEs, while keeping the interference to the Primary User Equipment (PUE) less than the predefined threshold value. In order to solve this non-convex problem, we have employed Artificial Bee Colony algorithm. Cognitive femtocell has emerged as a promising technique for indoor users in wireless communication systems since they have the cognitive and self-configuration capabilities. A number of methods have been used for spectrum sensing in femtocells with a cognitive engine. Another novel technique proposed in this thesis is near field source localization technique through which the cognitive femtocell will be able to detect the active femtocells in the licensed band and will get additional information including the range, amplitude, angle and operating frequency of a certain femtocell by employing genetic algorithm. Another contribution of this thesis is joint beamforming and null steering to maximize the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) towards the secondary user equipment (SUE) while minimizing the interference towards the primary Base Station (PBS) in a cognitive femtocell network. We are reutilizing the sensed uplink (UL) frequency of the Primary users for the downlink (DL) transmission; the cognitive femtocell base station (CFBS) calculates such weight vector that aims at sending the maxima towards the femto user and null in the direction of PBS. In order to validate the implication and effectiveness of the proposed techniques, simulations have been carried out under different constraints and a definite assortment of different parameters.