Research

5GEAR project focuses on 5G edge computing enhanced Mobile AR with ensuring security of the users and the system.

Research focus 1: 5G Edge computing architecture for Mobile AR

Mobile AR systems need to operate regardless of possible network issues. We study 5G edge computing architecture moving computations from the central cloud infrastructure to the edges of 5G networks. We focus on novel edge architectures to handle vast amounts of data and provide high performance and quality to Mobile AR, especially for the most latency-sensitive operations such as mapping, tracking and rendering. The architecture will also enhance the Mobile AR flow with context metadata, handle knowledge synchronization between the cloud and edge nodes, and manage virtualization technologies in edge nodes.

Research focus 2: Protocols for optimized Mobile AR within a 5G infrastructure

Mobile AR traffic is extremely constrained in bandwidth and latency as Mobile AR aims to provide the user with a seamless experience through highly unstable networks. Most research to date has focused on application-level approaches and algorithmic optimization rather than maximizing the link utilization. Aiming to minimize the impact of the network on the overall latency perceived by the user, we propose novel transport protocols to accommodate the needs of Mobile AR applications on wireless networks.

Research focus 3: Security mechanisms in Mobile AR

Although mobile AR use cases are getting higher recognition with the introduction of beyond 5G technologies, there are still ambiguities on how the expansion and evolution of mobile AR along with the future technologies will affect security and privacy of the user. We propose to develop a strong security mechanism for AR systems. The security mechanism is expected to develop device and user authentication and access control. In order to avoid overhead at the device level and reduce additional congestion at the central cloud, the security algorithms will be performed at the edge nodes, providing security as a service at the edge using 5G infrastructure. In addition, the desired security mechanism will be adaptive, efficient and intelligent in nature and would be capable of taking context-aware security decisions.

Selected publications:

  • Quadmetric Optimized Thumb-to-Finger Interaction for Force Assisted One-Handed Text Entry on Mobile Headsets. Lik-Hang Lee, Kit Yung Lam, Tong Li, Tristan Braud, Xiang Su, and Pan Hui. In Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT/UbiComp), London, September 2019.
  • M2A: A Frameworks for Visualizing Information from Mobile Web to Mobile Augmented Reality. Kit Yung Lam, Lik-Hang Lee, Tristan Braud, and Pan Hui. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2019), Kyoto Japan, March 2019.
  • HIBEY: Hide the Keyboard in Augmented Reality. Lik-Hang Lee, Kit Yung Lam, Yui Pan Yau, Tristan Braud, and Pan Hui. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2019), Kyoto Japan, March 2019.

Funding Agency:

Academy of Finland ICT 2023 program.

Research coordinator:

Prof. Pan Hui, University of Helsinki

Research cooperation:

External collaborators:

  • Imperial College London, UK
  • University of Cambridge, UK
  • Tsinghua University, China
  • Georgia Institute of Technology, US
  • Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
  • University of South Florida, US
  • Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden
  • Saint Louis University, US
  • Linköping University, Sweden