The Transmission Control Protocol.

Emerging applications such as Internet of Everything, Holographic Telepresence, collaborative robots, and space and deep-sea tourism are already highlighting the limitations of existing fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks. These limitations are in terms of data-rate, latency, reliability, availability, processing, connection density and global coverage, spanning over ground, underwater and space. The sixth-generation (6G) of mobile networks are expected to burgeon in the coming decade to address these limitations. The development of 6G vision, applications, technologies and standards has already become a popular research theme in academia and the industry. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of the current developments towards 6G. We highlight the societal and technological trends that initiate the drive towards 6G. Emerging applications to realize the demands raised by 6G driving trends are discussed subsequently. We also elaborate the requirements that are necessary to realize the 6G applications. Then we present the key enabling technologies in detail. We also outline current research projects and activities including standardization efforts towards the development of 6G. Finally, we summarize lessons learned from state-of-the-art research and discuss technical challenges that would shed a new light on future research directions towards 6G.

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Survey on 6G Frontiers: Trends, Applications, Requirements, Technologies and Future Research

Touch is currently seen as the modality that will complement audition and vision as a third media stream over the Internet in a variety of future haptic applications which will allow full immersion and that will, in many ways, impact society. Nevertheless, the high requirements of these applications demand networks which allow ultra-reliable and low-latency communication for the challenging task of applying the required quality of service for maintaining the user’s quality of experience at optimum levels. In this survey, we enlist, discuss, and evaluate methodologies and technologies of the necessary infrastructure for haptic communication. Furthermore, we focus on how the fifth generation of mobile networks will allow haptic applications to take life, in combination with the haptic data communication protocols, bilateral teleoperation control schemes and haptic data processing needed. Finally, we state the lessons learned throughout the surveyed research material along with the future challenges and infer our conclusions.

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Toward Haptic Communications Over the 5G Tactile Internet

Omnidirectional or 360° video is increasingly being used, mostly due to the latest advancements in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technology. However, its wide adoption is hindered by the higher bandwidth and lower latency requirements than associated with traditional video content delivery. Diverse researchers propose and design solutions that help support an immersive visual experience of 360° video, primarily when delivered over a dynamic network environment. This paper presents the state-of-the-art on adaptive 360° video delivery solutions considering end-to-end video streaming in general and then specifically of 360° video delivery. Current and emerging solutions for adaptive 360° video streaming, including viewport-independent, viewport-dependent, and tile-based schemes are presented. Next, solutions for network-assisted unicast and multicast streaming of 360° video content are discussed. Different research challenges for both on-demand and live 360° video streaming are also analyzed. Several proposed standards and technologies and top international research projects are then presented. We demonstrate the ongoing standardization efforts for 360° media services that ensure interoperability and immersive media deployment on a massive scale. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion about future research opportunities enabled by 360° video.

A Survey on Adaptive 360° Video Streaming: Solutions, Challenges and Opportunities

A common problem in many schools is the lack of equipment and materials in their science laboratories due to both limited budget available to the school and high maintenance cost of the lab. The latest technological advancements provide great opportunities for schools to go over the budget and cost issues by using 3D virtual learning environments that support simulations and observations of various experiments. A 3D immersive computer-based Physics educational application that teaches water cycle in nature and precipitation formation concepts through virtual reality and experimental virtual laboratory simulations was designed and developed as part of European Horizon 2020 NEWTON Project. The application was employed and evaluated as part of a case study carried out in a secondary school in Dublin, Ireland. 27 children of age 12-13 years old took part in the study as part of the experimental group. This paper presents an analysis of the user experience and usability results of the developed application, showing a high user experience score. The experimental group students also found the application enjoyable and they would like to take part in such novel-approach lessons more often.

Teaching and Learning Physics using 3D Virtual Learning Environment: A Case Study of Combined Virtual Reality and Virtual Laboratory in Secondary School

Multimedia synchronization involves a temporal relationship between audio and visual media components. The presentation of “in-sync” data streams is essential to achieve a natural impression, as “out-of-sync” effects are often associated with user quality of experience (QoE) decrease . Recently , multi-sensory media (mulsemedia) has been demonstrated to provide a highly immersive experience for its users. Unlike traditional multimedia, mulsemedia consists of other media types (i.e., haptic, olfaction, taste, etc.) in addition to audio and visual content. Therefore, the goal of achieving high quality mulsemedia transmission is to present no or little synchronization errors between the multiple media components. In order to achieve this ideal synchronization, there is a need for comprehensive knowledge of the synchronization requirements at the user interface. This paper presents the results of a subjective study carried out to explore the temporal boundaries within which haptic and air-flow media objects can be successfully synchronized with video media. Results show that skews between sensorial media and multimedia might still give the effect that the mulsemedia sequence is “in-sync” and provide certain constraints under which synchronization errors might be tolerated. The outcomes of the paper are used to provide recommendations for mulsemedia service providers in order for their services to be associated with acceptable user experience levels, e.g. haptic media could be presented with a delay of up to 1 s behind video content, while air-flow media could be released either 5 s ahead of or 3 s behind video content.

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Perceived Synchronization of Mulsemedia Services

5G technology is expected to enable many innovative applications in different verticals. These applications have heterogeneous performance requirements (e.g., high data rate, low latency, high reliability, and high availability). In order to meet these requirements, 5G networks endorse network flexibility through the deployment of new emerging technologies, mainly network slicing and mobile edge computing. This article introduces a distributed blockchain-enabled network slicing (DBNS) framework that enables service and resource providers to dynamically lease resources to ensure high performance for their end-to-end services. The key component of our framework is the global service provisioning (GSP), which provides admission control for incoming service requests along with dynamic resource assignment by means of a blockchain-based bidding system. The goal is to improve users' experience with diverse services and reduce providers' capital and operational expenditures.

DBNS: A Distributed Blockchain-Enabled Network Slicing Framework for 5G Networks

The Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) is a standard designed for adaptive multimedia delivery. This paper describes an adaptive multimedia and mulsemedia delivery system which employs an extension of DASH to support multiple sensorial media. Testing using a real-life test-bed shows how user satisfaction increases when employing the proposed solution which exposes users to multi-sensorial content. The motivation behind this work is the creation the first solution for remote adaptive multi-sensory media (mulsemedia) content delivery in order to enhance user satisfaction and increase their quality of experience. A DASH-based mulsemedia delivery system (DASH-MS) was built and tested. This work focuses on a fundamental issue for remote multi-sensory media systems: synchronization and shows how the proposed DASH-MS addresses it. Results of real life subjective testing indicate that the average levels of user satisfaction when exposed to content with the mulsemedia effects are better or at least equal to those when no such effects were included. Additionally, the highest value of the level of satisfaction corresponds to the case when these effects were correctly synchronized. Finally, users seem to have preferred effects in advance than late effects.

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A DASH-based Mulsemedia Adaptive Delivery Solution

The continuous innovations and advances in both high-end mobile devices and wireless communication technologies have increased the users demand and expectations for anywhere, anytime, any device high quality multimedia applications provisioning. Moreover, the heterogeneity of the wireless network environment offers the possibility to the mobile user to select between several available radio access network technologies. However, selecting the network that enables the best user perceived video quality is not trivial given that in general the network characteristics vary widely not only in time but also depending on the user location within each network. In this context, this paper proposes a user location-aware reputation-based network selection solution which aims at improving the video delivery in a heterogeneous wireless network environment by selecting the best value network. Network performance is regularly monitored and evaluated by the currently connected users in different areas of each individual network. Based on the existing network performance-related information and mobile user location and speed, the network that offers the best support for video delivery along the user's path is selected as the target network and the handover is triggered. The simulation results show that the proposed solution improves the video delivery quality in comparison with the case when a classic network selection mechanism was employed.

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Ting Bi

Papers

A Survey on Adaptive 360° Video Streaming: Solutions, Challenges and Opportunities

Perceived Synchronization of Mulsemedia Services

DBNS: A Distributed Blockchain-Enabled Network Slicing Framework for 5G Networks

A DASH-based Mulsemedia Adaptive Delivery Solution

Reputation-based network selection solution for improved video delivery quality in heterogeneous wireless network environments