5GEAR- 5G Edge computing Enhanced Augmented Reality

Project title: 5GEAR- 5G Edge computing enhanced Augmented Reality (Decision No. 319669)

Timespan: 01.01.2019 – 31.12.2021

Description:

Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) is gaining popularity due to the wide adoption of mobile and wearable devices and is one of the future applications targeted by 5G. MAR applications can thus augment the physical world with complex context-relevant virtual layers. Such applications are strongly dependent on solid network architectures to provide situational awareness (by connecting MAR to the IoT world) as well as offloading the most computation-intensive operations to distant machines. MAR traffic is much more constrained than tradition audiovisual flows, as it aims to provide a seamless experience through highly unstable wireless networks. 5GEAR aims at providing a reliable framework to meet MAR constraints for 5G networks. 5GEAR project proposes a novel edge computing architecture to reduce latency, provide more stable network connectivity, and serve situational-awareness data to the application. This architecture will be divided in two layers, namely edge and cloud, in which autonomous edge nodes collect, pre-process and contextualize the data, while the cloud handles the most computation and storage intensive operations. A set of network and transmission layer protocol will complement this edge infrastructure to fully exploit the capabilities of 5G. In particular, we will study how one can exploit multiple paths using predictive modelling to meet MAR constraints. These protocols will in turn interact directly with the application to determine the traffic priorities and ensure seamless service. We also design a robust and efficient security architecture for MAR systems at the edge level, focusing on 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. For the validation of the concepts developed within this project, 5GEAR will use the 5GTN deployed at University of Oulu campus. This network provides a carrier grade test network, with the necessary measurement and monitoring tools.

Selected publications:

(to appear)

Financiers and Business partners:

Academy of Finland ICT 2023 program.

Research cooperation:

Imperial College London, UK

University of Cambridge, UK

Tsinghua University,  China

Georgia Institute of Technology, US

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

University of South Florida, US

Swedish Institute of Computer Science,  Sweden

Saint Louis University,US

Linköping University, Sweden

Project director(s):

Professor Pan Hui, University of Helsinki

Associate Professor Mika Ylianttila, Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC), University of Oulu

Dr. Xiang Su, Center for Ubiquitous Computing (UBICOMP), University of Oulu