Niall Murray
Athlone Institute of Technology, Electronics & Informatics, Faculty Member
- Athlone Institute of Technology, Software Research Center, Department Memberadd
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One of the most promising technologies that is driving digitalization in several industries is Digital Twin (DT). DT refers to the digital replica or model of any physical object (physical twin). What differentiates DT from simulation and... more
One of the most promising technologies that is driving digitalization in several industries is Digital Twin (DT). DT refers to the digital replica or model of any physical object (physical twin). What differentiates DT from simulation and other digital or CAD models is the automatic bidirectional exchange of data between digital and physical twins in real-time. The benefits of implementing DT in any sector include reduced operational costs and time, increased productivity, better decision making, improved predictive/preventive maintenance, etc. As a result, its implementation is expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades as, with the advent of Industry 4.0, products and systems have become more intelligent, relaying on collection and storing incremental amounts of data. Connecting that data effectively to DTs can open up many new opportunities and this paper explores different industrial sectors where the implementation of DT is taking advantage of these opportunities and ...
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The number of devices connected by the Internet of Things (IoT) has exceeded billions today. As IoT grows, so do the volumes of data it produces. Distributed data process (such as: MapReduce) performs better than a single central server... more
The number of devices connected by the Internet of Things (IoT) has exceeded billions today. As IoT grows, so do the volumes of data it produces. Distributed data process (such as: MapReduce) performs better than a single central server by considering the big data set. Moreover, many IoT network spans widely in geographical areas, such as smart cities and supply chain management. Thus, the collected data can be processed in distributed way before transmission. This paper studies how to develop a MapReduce framework to process massive IoT data. Because in many cases IoT consumers desire more to get the meaningful knowledge than to build connections with multiple devices. The proposed framework should also fits well with the information-centric nature of IoT applications. As a result, our design (MR-IoT) is built upon a novel Information Centric Networking (ICN) architecture — NDN. It defines two schemes to execute MapReduce tasks on IoT: computational tree construction and computational task dissemination. A testbed is built on ndnSIM to verify the design and the result shows the defined schemes work correctly and the network traffic is significantly decreased.
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Digital Twin (DT) refers to the virtual copy or model of any physical entity (physical twin) both of which are interconnected via exchange of data in real time. Conceptually, a DT mimics the state of its physical twin in real time and... more
Digital Twin (DT) refers to the virtual copy or model of any physical entity (physical twin) both of which are interconnected via exchange of data in real time. Conceptually, a DT mimics the state of its physical twin in real time and vice versa. Application of DT includes real-time monitoring, designing/planning, optimization, maintenance, remote access, etc. Its implementation is expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades. The advent of Industry 4.0 has brought complex industrial systems that are more autonomous, smart, and highly interconnected. These systems generate considerable amounts of data useful for several applications such as improving performance, predictive maintenance, training, etc. A sudden influx in the number of publications related to ‘Digital Twin’ has led to confusion between different terminologies related to the digitalization of industries. Another problem that has arisen due to the growing popularity of DT is a lack of consensus on the descriptio...
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Whilst investigating student performance in design and arithmetic tasks, as well as during exams, electrodermal activity (EDA)-based sensors have been used in attempts to understand cognitive function and cognitive load. Limitations in... more
Whilst investigating student performance in design and arithmetic tasks, as well as during exams, electrodermal activity (EDA)-based sensors have been used in attempts to understand cognitive function and cognitive load. Limitations in the employed approaches include lack of capacity to mark events in the data, and to explain other variables relating to performance outcomes. This paper aims to address these limitations, and to support the utility of wearable EDA sensor technology in educational research settings. These aims are achieved through use of a bespoke time mapping software which identifies key events during task performance and by taking a novel approach to synthesizing EDA data from a qualitative behavioral perspective. A convergent mixed method design is presented whereby the associated implementation follows a two-phase approach. The first phase involves the collection of the required EDA and behavioral data. Phase two outlines a mixed method analysis with two approache...
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Recently, multimedia researchers have added several so-called new media to the traditional multimedia components (e.g., olfaction, haptic, and gustation). Evaluating multimedia user-perceived Quality of Experience (QoE) is already... more
Recently, multimedia researchers have added several so-called new media to the traditional multimedia components (e.g., olfaction, haptic, and gustation). Evaluating multimedia user-perceived Quality of Experience (QoE) is already non-trivial and the addition of multisensorial media components increases this challenge. No standardized methodology exists to conduct subjective quality assessments of multisensorial media applications. To date, researchers have employed different aspects of audiovisual standards to assess user QoE of multisensorial media applications and thus, a fragmented approach exists. In this article, the authors highlight issues researchers face from numerous perspectives including applicability (or lack of) existing audiovisual standards to evaluate user QoE and lack of result comparability due to varying approaches, specific requirements of olfactory-based multisensorial media applications, and novelty associated with these applications. Finally, based on the di...
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Media-rich content plays a vital role in consumer applications today, as these applications try to find new and interesting ways to engage their users. Video, audio, and the more traditional forms of media content continue to dominate... more
Media-rich content plays a vital role in consumer applications today, as these applications try to find new and interesting ways to engage their users. Video, audio, and the more traditional forms of media content continue to dominate with respect to the use of media content to enhance the user experience. Tactile interactivity has also now become widely popular in modern computing applications, while our olfactory and gustatory senses continue to have a limited role. However, in recent times, there have been significant advancements regarding the use of olfactory media content (i.e., smell), and there are a variety of devices now available to enable its computer-controlled emission. This paper explores the impact of the audio stream on user perception of olfactory-enhanced video content in the presence of skews between the olfactory and video media. This research uses the results from two experimental studies of user-perceived quality of olfactory-enhanced multimedia, where audio w...
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As a step towards enhancing users' perceived multimedia quality levels, this article presents the results of a study which looked at user's perception of inter-stream synchronization between scent and video. The ability to detect... more
As a step towards enhancing users' perceived multimedia quality levels, this article presents the results of a study which looked at user's perception of inter-stream synchronization between scent and video. The ability to detect and the perception of and impact of skew on user's quality of experience is analyzed considering user's age, sex, and culture (user profile). The results indicate that skews beyond a certain level between olfaction and video have a negative impact on user-perceived experience. Olfaction before video is more noticeable to users than olfaction after video, and assessors are more tolerable of olfactory data presented after video.
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This study looked at users' perception of interstream synchronization between audiovisual media and two olfactory streams. The ability to detect skews and the perception and impact of skews on user Quality of Experience (QoE) is... more
This study looked at users' perception of interstream synchronization between audiovisual media and two olfactory streams. The ability to detect skews and the perception and impact of skews on user Quality of Experience (QoE) is analyzed. The olfactory streams are presented with the same skews (i.e., delay) and with variable skews (i.e., jitter and mix of scents). This article reports the limits beyond which desynchronization reduces user-perceived quality levels. Also, a minimum gap between the presentations of consecutive scents is identified, necessary to ensuring enhanced user-perceived quality. There is no evidence (not considering scent type) that overlapping or mixing of scents increases user QoE levels for olfaction-enhanced multimedia.
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The Internet of Things (IoT) places significant demands on network infrastructure in order to process data captured by ubiquitous sensor devices. One existing technique to support this sensor data processing involves transporting captured... more
The Internet of Things (IoT) places significant demands on network infrastructure in order to process data captured by ubiquitous sensor devices. One existing technique to support this sensor data processing involves transporting captured data to cloud servers. This approach suffers from numerous issues such as increased transmission costs i.e. bandwidth consumption and delays. To help resolve these issues, this paper proposes Programmable IoT (PIoT), a novel IoT data processing architecture. It is an application layer design which operates over Named Data Networking (NDN) to enable the execution of reconfigurable processing-logic in the network. In addition, a novel naming scheme and computation service for IoT is presented to describe the processing requirements using Lambda Expressions. To verify the feasibility of our design, a real-world implementation was created and evaluated. It compares efficiency of the in-network versus out-network approaches.
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As a step towards enhancing users’ perceived multimedia quality levels beyond the level offered by the classic audiovisual systems, the authors present the results of an experimental study which looked at user’s perception of inter-stream... more
As a step towards enhancing users’ perceived multimedia quality levels beyond the level offered by the classic audiovisual systems, the authors present the results of an experimental study which looked at user’s perception of inter-stream synchronization between olfactory data (scent) and video (without relevant audio). The impact on user’s quality of experience (by considering enjoyment, relevance and reality) comparing synchronous with asynchronous presentation of olfactory and video media is analyzed and discussed. The aim is to empirically define the temporal boundaries within which users perceive olfactory data and video to be synchronized. The key analysis compares the user detection and perception of synchronization error. State of the art works have investigated temporal boundaries for olfactory data with audiovisual media, but no works document the integration of olfactory data and video (with no related audio). The results of this work show that the temporal boundaries for...
— In the quest to increase user perceived Quality of Experience (QoE), the classic audiovisual content paradigm can be extended to include media components that stimulate other human senses. Among these, olfaction-enhanced multimedia has... more
— In the quest to increase user perceived Quality of Experience (QoE), the classic audiovisual content paradigm can be extended to include media components that stimulate other human senses. Among these, olfaction-enhanced multimedia has attracted significant attention, as it is both attractive from user point of view and challenging from research perspective. This paper presents the results of two subjective studies which analyzed user QoE of olfaction-enhanced multimedia. Diverse scent types and video content were considered. In particular QoE levels were studied when one and two olfaction stimuli enhanced audiovisual media. The results presented show that scent type influences user QoE. Statistically significant differences between pleasant and unpleasant scent types existed. Also, in certain cases, users were prepared to forgive the presence of unpleasant scent types with respect to QoE. Finally users reported a clear preference for olfaction presented after the video sequence with which the olfaction effect should be synchronized, as opposed to before the video sequence.
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— The availability of affordable head-mounted displays has resulted in renewed interest in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). This in turn has led to research into users' perceptions of quality in AR and VR environments. In... more
— The availability of affordable head-mounted displays has resulted in renewed interest in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). This in turn has led to research into users' perceptions of quality in AR and VR environments. In this paper, the authors report the results of an experimental study that compared the user quality of experience (QoE) of an interactive and immersive speech and language assessment implemented in both AR and VR. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first work that compares user QoE of VR and AR applications, in particular with a focus on applications in the speech and language domain. Subjective and objective data was captured to assess a user's QoE. Objective data, such as heart rate and electrodermal activity (EDA) was collected using consumer electronic devices such as the Fitbit and the PIP biosensor. Subjective data was captured using a user's self-reported ratings in a post-test questionnaire. The findings of this study demonstrate similar QoE ratings for both the AR and VR environments. The findings also suggest that users acclimatized to the AR environment more quickly than the VR environment.
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—Recently, we have seen an emergence of affordable Head Mounted Displays (HMD) such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and the PS4 Project Morpheus which allow users to experience 3D virtual reality (VR). These types of hardware aim to... more
—Recently, we have seen an emergence of affordable Head Mounted Displays (HMD) such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and the PS4 Project Morpheus which allow users to experience 3D virtual reality (VR). These types of hardware aim to facilitate new and novel experiences for users above and beyond what is possible with traditional audiovisual displays. However, a very limited number of studies exist in the literature to determine the influence of these technologies on user Quality of Experience (QoE). In order to evaluate QoE as users consume VR content, this paper proposes the use of affordable consumer electronics to capture objective physiological metrics: Heart Rate (HR) and ElectroDermal Activity (EDA). Our findings indicate different HR and EDA dependent on VR and non-VR environments. Additionally, we examine the relationship between these objective metrics and user QoE captured via a post-test questionnaire. To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first work which demonstrates a tangible relationship between the EDA/HR combination and user QoE of immersive VR environments.
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—With the aim to enrich users' perceived multimedia experience, the authors present the results of an empirical study which looked at user perception of olfaction based mulsemedia. The goal is to evaluate the influence of users' age and... more
—With the aim to enrich users' perceived multimedia experience, the authors present the results of an empirical study which looked at user perception of olfaction based mulsemedia. The goal is to evaluate the influence of users' age and gender on user quality of experience (QoE) considering various scent types and categories (pleasant or not). The results present a complex relationship between these variables and how they influence user QoE. They indicate that different user groups report different perception of content level factors for olfaction based mulsemedia.
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Existing multimedia systems used in education mostly address only two senses by using two communication channels (visual and audio) of the five human senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch), limiting the potential efficiency of... more
Existing multimedia systems used in education mostly address only two senses by using two communication channels (visual and audio) of the five human senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch), limiting the potential efficiency of learning. This paper presents a survey on existing technical opportunities for the development of an immersive learning environment. Four components of the immersive environment – visual, audio, olfactory, and haptic are described and discussed in the paper. In particular 3D displays, head mounted devices, 3D sound systems, olfactory displays, haptic devices, and interaction devices are presented
ABSTRACT There is an increasing growth of usage on mobile devices in this decade. However, the limited computation ability and energy weaken the performance as the web applications of mobile devices are more and more rich and... more
ABSTRACT There is an increasing growth of usage on mobile devices in this decade. However, the limited computation ability and energy weaken the performance as the web applications of mobile devices are more and more rich and energy-consumed. The development of cloud computing and mobile computation offloading technologies provides an opportunity for removing the limitations of mobile devices. This paper presents MOJA - a JavaScript offloading solution for web centric mobile applications based on WebSocket and Node.JS. The computing ability of mobile device is augmented by offloading the computational functions of the web applications to cloud servers running Node.JS. The computation results are sent back to mobile devices using the WebSocket technologies. Various experiments have been executed to validate the solution. The test results show that the proposed solution can significantly enhance the performance of mobile devices and provide a better Quality of Experience to end users.
ABSTRACT A programmable networking approach to accounting and charging for services in software defined wireless networks (SDWN) could greatly facilitate the service innovation that is anticipated therein. It would allow service... more
ABSTRACT A programmable networking approach to accounting and charging for services in software defined wireless networks (SDWN) could greatly facilitate the service innovation that is anticipated therein. It would allow service differentiation through customized charging and would support the provision of composite services across multiple providers. In this position paper we consider how earlier approaches to active charging can be combined with the 3GPP charging architecture, recent SDWN inspired cellular architectures innovations, including network virtualization, to provide an active accounting and charging infrastructure for SDWN. Our analysis shows that active charging in SDWN is technically feasible, commercially beneficial and incrementally deployable
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ABSTRACT Traditionally, Received Signal Strength (RSS) has been the primary indicator informing network selection strategies. However, approaches based on RSS are limited as they do not consider how (a) dynamic network conditions and (b)... more
ABSTRACT Traditionally, Received Signal Strength (RSS) has been the primary indicator informing network selection strategies. However, approaches based on RSS are limited as they do not consider how (a) dynamic network conditions and (b) potential predictability of movement affects network performance. The wider research focus analyses the potential effect of weather on network handover decisions. In this context, a modulation strategy typically used in poor weather conditions is chosen and an analysis is done of the relative importance of the key dynamic performance metrics, loss, delay and RSS. In neural networks, synaptic weights reflect the relative importance of each performance metric. This work informs our selection of optimal synaptic weights when implementing a neural network controlled network handover decision within the context of the IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover (MIH) standard.
ABSTRACT The substantial growth in the usage of mobile devices with internet access has resulted in increased demand for Internet access over wireless networks. Today, wireless networks that employ different technologies are often... more
ABSTRACT The substantial growth in the usage of mobile devices with internet access has resulted in increased demand for Internet access over wireless networks. Today, wireless networks that employ different technologies are often integrated to create large network topologies. However, there are challenges associated with combining different wireless technologies together as part of a large network topology. One such challenge is the variation in performance such as packet delay, interference and loss. The effects of jitter and packet loss have been well documented in the literature. However, not much research has been carried out on video streaming performance when initiating vertical handovers in heterogeneous network environments. This paper presents an objective view on the performance of video streaming in a heterogeneous network topology when a handover algorithm is implemented that hands the stream off to a better quality connection. The end result of the video stream is then compared to the original video file. The results of these experiments illustrate that in conditions where the current network is of poor quality, handovers can make a large difference to the overall quality of the received video file if a handover mechanism is implemented properly.
Abstract In future multimedia systems, seamless access to application services on different devices available to users in their vicinity, will be commonplace. The availability of these services will change as the mobile user moves.... more
Abstract In future multimedia systems, seamless access to application services on different devices available to users in their vicinity, will be commonplace. The availability of these services will change as the mobile user moves. Current 3G multimedia systems do not support access to multiple applications operating on multiple different devices in context of a session or indeed seamless device session handover. Considering these requirements, the authors outline two multimedia communication platforms which potentially solve this ...