Multimodal Photoplethysmography-Based Approaches for Improved Detection of Hypertension

Elevated blood pressure (BP) is a major cause of death, yet hypertension commonly goes undetected. Owing to its nature, it is typically asymptomatic until later in its progression when the vessel or organ structure has already been compromised. Therefore, noninvasive and continuous BP measurement methods are needed to ensure appropriate diagnosis and early management before hypertension leads to irreversible complications. Photoplethysmography (PPG) is a noninvasive technology with waveform morphologies similar to that of arterial BP waveforms, therefore attracting interest regarding its usability in BP estimation. In recent years, wearable devices incorporating PPG sensors have been proposed to improve the early diagnosis and management of hypertension. Additionally, the need for improved accuracy and convenience has led to the development of devices that incorporate multiple different biosignals with PPG. Through the addition of modalities such as an electrocardiogram, a final measure of the pulse wave velocity is derived, which has been proved to be inversely correlated to BP and to yield accurate estimations. This paper reviews and summarizes recent studies within the period 2010-2019 that combined PPG with other biosignals and offers perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of current developments to guide future advancements in BP measurement. Our literature review reveals promising measurement accuracies and we comment on the effective combinations of modalities and success of this technology

An Efficient Data Exchange Algorithm for Chained Network Functions

In-network function chaining often involves the deployment of multiple applications into a single, possibly multi-tenant, middlebox. This approach has gained much interest since new network paradigms, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), have been proposed to virtualize resources as well as network functions. In this scenario, it is very common to move data (e.g., packets) from an application to another by means of a switching module that is in charge of chaining network functions in the correct order, also ensuring an adequate level of isolation between any two virtualized components. With this purpose in mind, this paper proposes an efficient algorithm to handle the communication between the internal soft-switch and the heterogeneous network functions that are executed on the same server. Our proposal is designed with the aim of dealing with high speed packet processing, hence an extensive performance evaluation is also provided to prove the goodness of our solution in this context

Applying cumulative effects perspective to wildlife health: Adapting a determinants of health approach to wildlife populations

This thesis explores the feasibility and utility of adapting a determinants of health (DOH) approach to wildlife populations in order to develop a cumulative effects perspective of health in those populations. The first objective was to investigate the theoretical feasibility of adapting the DOH framework from human population health to wildlife. This was accomplished using a combination of methods including a scoping literature review, expert knowledge elicitation, and network analysis. We found that a theoretical foundation does exist for a DOH approach in wildlife and that it is consistent both with how wildlife is discussed in the literature and how management professionals perceive health. The second objective was to determine if the DOH conceptual model could be used to facilitate identification of shared goals or priorities for wildlife management across different stakeholder groups. Using network analysis of the expert opinion of two key Pacific salmon (Oncorhyncus spp.) stakeholder groups, we evaluated whether the DOH model could be used to identify shared perceptions of health. The DOH network was useful for visualizations of perceptions of health and was effective for identification of commonalities between disparate groups. The third objective was to identify if the DOH model could meet a need within existing policy to determine if this approach could be feasible within the existing system. We conducted a review of policy pertaining to Pacific salmon within Fisheries and Oceans Canada. A policy need was identified for a DOH approach that would provide a cohesive vision of salmon health across different government sectors. The fourth objective was to investigate whether there is an existing foundation of practice for applying a DOH perspective to support a healthy policy approach for wildlife. We reviewed data from already existing sources for Chilko Lake sockeye salmon (O. nerka) to determine if there were resources available to implement a DOH perspective. A DOH approach to measuring and monitoring salmon health within DFO was feasible and a foundation of practice exists, with measures or indicators of many of the expert-identified drivers of health already being collected

Rapid restoration techniques for software-defined networks

There is increasing demand in modern day business applications for communication networks to be robust and reliable due to the complexity and critical nature of such applications. As such, data delivery is expected to be reliable and secure even in the harshest of environments. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is gaining traction as a promising approach for designing network architectures which are robust and flexible. One reason for this is that separating the data plane from the control plane, increases the controller’s ability to configure the network rapidly. When network failure events occur, the network manager may trade-off the optimality of the achieved network reconfiguration with the responsivenss of the reconfiguration process. Responsiveness may be favoured when the network resources are under stress and the failure rate is high. We contribute SDN recovery methods that leverage information about the structure of the network to expedite network restoration when a link failure occurs. They operate by detecting community-like structures in the network topology and then they find alternative paths which have low operation and installation costs using this information. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the proposed SDN recovery methods using open-source simulation tools. They provide evidence that the proposed approaches lead to performance gains when an alternative path is required among a set of candidate paths

Transpacific Testbed for Real-Time Experimentation

The transpacific testbed is a generic routing encapsulation (GRE) tunnel built between CUNY City College (CCNY), USA and Kyushu Institute of Technology (KYUTECH), Japan. The tunnel, built through internet2, originated from CCNY through the JGN network in Seattle and terminated at Kyutech in Japan. The testbed defines the future of the Internet by focusing on addressing research challenges associated with enabling trustworthy networks, supporting the Internet of Things (IoT), which encompasses everything connected to the Internet and cyber-physical systems (CPS) - a controlled mechanism monitored by computer-based algorithms. In this paper, we describe the setting up and testing of the testbed. Furthermore, we describe the real-time experiments conducted on the testbed and present the results. The experiments are classified into two: blockchain-based cooperative intrusion detection system (CoIDS) and Secure Virtual Machine introspection. In each of the experiments, we describe the method and present the results. Finally, we look into the ongoing works of extending the testbed to the COSMIC global testbed.2021 IEEE 4th 5G World Forum (5GWF 2021), 13-15, October, 2021, Virtual Conferenc

The future roadmap of in-vehicle network processing: a HW-centric (R-)evolution

© 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.The automotive industry is undergoing a deep revolution. With the race towards autonomous driving, the amount of technologies, sensors and actuators that need to be integrated in the vehicle increases exponentially. This imposes new great challenges in the vehicle electric/electronic (E/E) architecture and, especially, in the In-Vehicle Network (IVN). In this work, we analyze the evolution of IVNs, and focus on the main network processing platform integrated in them: the Gateway (GW). We derive the requirements of Network Processing Platforms that need to be fulfilled by future GW controllers focusing on two perspectives: functional requirements and structural requirements. Functional requirements refer to the functionalities that need to be delivered by these network processing platforms. Structural requirements refer to design aspects which ensure the feasibility, usability and future evolution of the design. By focusing on the Network Processing architecture, we review the available options in the state of the art, both in industry and academia. We evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each architecture in terms of the coverage provided for the functional and structural requirements. In our analysis, we detect a gap in this area: there is currently no architecture fulfilling all the requirements of future automotive GW controllers. In light of the available network processing architectures and the current technology landscape, we identify Hardware (HW) accelerators and custom processor design as a key differentiation factor which boosts the devices performance. From our perspective, this points to a need - and a research opportunity - to explore network processing architectures with a strong HW focus, unleashing the potential of next-generation network processors and supporting the demanding requirements of future autonomous and connected vehicles.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version