Best Poster- Runner-up Award at the 2025 IEEE 22nd Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC) in Las Vegas, Nevada, US.
The next generation of immersive applications, such as eXtended reality (XR), will likely be cloud-based and streamed over mobile networks using myriad technologies such as WiFi and 6th-generation mobile networks. Mobile networks promise ubiquitous connectivity but are prone to stochastic network conditions that may be detrimental to end users’ quality of experience (QoE). The impact of network conditions on QoE has been studied extensively by industry and academia regarding various multimedia services such as audio, video, and gaming. However, the impact of network conditions on users’ QoE for XR-based social applications has yet to be thoroughly investigated. This paper presents novel results assessing the impact of network conditions (N=20) involving factors such as round trip time (RTT), jitter (RJ), and packet losses (PL) on users’ QoE via realistic subjective tests (N=28) regarding social XR application. Our results show that social XR applications require stringent QoS conditions. In particular, our results show that increasing RTT values do not significantly affect users’ QoE up to 77ms. Combined PL and RTT cases cause significant QoE degradation from 77ms onward with greater than 2% PL. Most importantly, results show that a very small jitter value with one standard deviation beyond 52 milliseconds can lead to significant QoE degradation. Further, jitter values beyond three standard deviations for 27ms RTT and beyond should be avoided.
Best paper award at 2021 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference
The rise in the aging population worldwide is already negatively impacting healthcare systems due to the lack of resources. It is envisioned that the development of novel Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart city healthcare systems may not only alleviate the stress on the current healthcare systems but may significantly improve the overall quality of life of the elderly. As more elderly homes are fitted with IoT, and intelligent healthcare becomes the norm, there is a need to develop innovative augmented reality (AR) based applications and services that make it easier for caregivers to interact with such systems and assist the elderly on a daily basis. This paper proposes, develops, and validates an AR and IoT-enabled healthcare system to be used by caregivers. The proposed system is based on a smart city IoT middleware platform and provides a standardized, intuitive and non-intrusive way to deliver elderly person’s information to caregivers. We present our prototype, and our experimental results show the efficiency of our system in IoT object detection and relevant information retrieval tasks. The average execution time, including object detection, communicating with a server, and rendering the results in the application, takes on average between 767ms and 1,283ms.
Best paper candidate award at IEEE International Conference on Smart Internet of Things (SmartIoT), 2021
One of the main drivers behind blockchain adoption is a lack of trust among entities serving a common goal, but with different interests. Following the success of Bitcoin, several blockchain platforms have emerged, such as Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric, to enable conducting distrusted processes in a non-repudiable manner. However, it is not safe to assume the applicability of conventional software design strategies to Blockchain-based solutions. In this paper, we assume an untrusted SLA (service level agreement) relationship between an IoT service provider and its consumer. We adopt Hyperledger Fabric for the purpose of implementing SLA compliance assessment. We design a smart contract that takes blockchain unique features into consideration. The design particularly accounts for the MVCC (multiversion concurrency control) mechanism, which while effective for resolving the double spending problem, causes read-write conflicts when high transmission rates are experienced between the IoT application and the blockchain. Using a fire station event monitoring scenario, we describe our smart contract design and solution for conflicting transactions. We experimentally evaluate our solution and demonstrate clear performance improvements in terms of throughput and latency.
Best paper candidate award at IEEE International Conference on Smart Internet of Things (SmartIoT), 2020
Within cloud-based internet of things (IoT) applications, typically cloud providers employ Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure the quality of their provisioned services. Similar to any other contractual method, an SLA is not immune to breaches. Ideally, an SLA stipulates consequences (e.g. penalties) imposed on cloud providers when they fail to conform to SLA terms. The current practice assumes trust in service providers to acknowledge SLA breach incidents and executing associated consequences. Recently, the Blockchain paradigm has introduced compelling capabilities that may enable us to address SLA enforcement more elegantly. This paper proposes and implements a blockchain-based approach for assessing SLA compliance and enforcing consequences. It employs a diagnostic accuracy method for validating the dependability of the proposed solution. The paper also benchmarks Hyperledger Fabric to investigate its feasibility as an underlying blockchain infrastructure concerning latency and transaction success/fail rates.