EMG-based eye gestures recognition for hands free interfacing

This study investigates the utilization of an Electromyography (EMG) based device to recognize five eye gestures and classify them to have a hands free interaction with different applications. The proposed eye gestures in this work includes Long Blinks, Rapid Blinks, Wink Right, Wink Left and finally Squints or frowns. The MUSE headband, which is originally a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) that measures the Electroencephalography (EEG) signals, is the device used in our study to record the EMG signals from behind the earlobes via two Smart rubber sensors and at the forehead via two other electrodes. The signals are considered as EMG once they involve the physical muscular stimulations, which are considered as artifacts for the EEG Brain signals for other studies. The experiment is conducted on 15 participants (12 Males and 3 Females) randomly as no specific groups were targeted and the session was video taped for reevaluation. The experiment starts with the calibration phase to record each gesture three times per participant through a developed Voice narration program to unify the test conditions and time intervals among all subjects. In this study, a dynamic sliding window with segmented packets is designed to faster process the data and analyze it, as well as to provide more flexibility to classify the gestures regardless their duration from one user to another. Additionally, we are using the thresholding algorithm to extract the features from all the gestures. The Rapid Blinks and the Squints were having high F1 Scores of 80.77% and 85.71% for the Trained Thresholds, as well as 87.18% and 82.12% for the Default or manually adjusted thresholds. The accuracies of the Long Blinks, Rapid Blinks and Wink Left were relatively higher with the manually adjusted thresholds, while the Squints and the Wink Right were better with the trained thresholds. However, more improvements were proposed and some were tested especially after monitoring the participants actions from the video recordings to enhance the classifier. Most of the common irregularities met are discussed within this study so as to pave the road for further similar studies to tackle them before conducting the experiments. Several applications need minimal physical or hands interactions and this study was originally a part of the project at HCI Lab, University of Stuttgart to make a hands-free switching between RGB, thermal and depth cameras integrated on or embedded in an Augmented Reality device designed for the firefighters to increase their visual capabilities in the field

Improved Spectrum Mobility using Virtual Reservation in Collaborative Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio technology would enable a set of secondary users (SU) to opportunistically use the spectrum licensed to a primary user (PU). On the appearance of this PU on a specific frequency band, any SU occupying this band should free it for PUs. Typically, SUs may collaborate to reduce the impact of cognitive users on the primary network and to improve the performance of the SUs. In this paper, we propose and analyze the performance of virtual reservation in collaborative cognitive networks. Virtual reservation is a novel link maintenance strategy that aims to maximize the throughput of the cognitive network through full spectrum utilization. Our performance evaluation shows significant improvements not only in the SUs blocking and forced termination probabilities but also in the throughput of cognitive users.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figures, IEEE ISCC 201

A bioinorganic approach to the study of the interactions of nitrogen oxides with manganese porphyrins and manganese- and cobalt-reconstituted myoglobin.

This dissertation deals with the interaction of the biologically important nitrogen oxides (nitric oxide and nitrite) with manganese and ruthenium centers in small inorganic porphyrin and nonporphyrin complexes as well as with manganese and cobalt centers in manganese and cobalt substituted myoglobin.Also we report the room and the low temperature (-78° C) cyclic voltammetric behavior of three six coordinate (por)Mn(NO)(1-MeIm) (por = tetraphenylporphyrin dianion (TPP), tetratolylporphyrin dianion (TTP) or tetra-p-methoxyphenylporphyrin dianion (T(p-OCH3)PP)) complexes at a Pt disc electrode in two nonaqueous solvents (CH2Cl2 and THF). In CH2Cl2 at room temperature, the compounds undergo four oxidations and two reductions within the solvent limit; in THF, the compounds undergo one oxidation and three reductions. In both solvents, the first oxidation represents a chemically irreversible one-electron process involving the rapid loss of nitric oxide. The oxidation occurs at the MnNO site as judged from bulk electrolysis, UV-vis spectroscopy at room temperature, and IR-spectroelectrochemistry at room temperature and at -78° C. The second oxidation, accessible in CH2Cl2, is also chemically irreversible and occurs at the porphyrin ring; the third and the fourth oxidations are, on the other hand, chemically reversible but also occur at the porphyrin ring. The first reduction is chemically irreversible in CH2Cl2, occurs at the porphyrin ring, and is followed by loss of NO. In THF, the first reduction is chemically reversible and is followed by reversible loss of NO.Chapter 1 introduces the fundamental background of the biological importance of nitric oxide, nitrite, manganese porphyrins and manganese-reconstituted myoglobin.Chapter 4 describes the 1.6--2.0 A resolution crystal structures of the as-isolated Mn-substituted horse heart myoglobin (hh MnIIIMb), the reduced form hh MnIIMb, and complexes of hh MnMb with methanol, azide, nitric oxide, and nitrite. The MnIIIMb compound contains distal pocket water in two positions, one coordinated and the other not coordinated. The reduced form, MnIIMb, lacks a distal pocket water molecule, in contrast to that observed previously for the iron-containing deoxy Mb. Interestingly, the structure of the NO adduct suggests a loosely bound NO in the distal pocket; the Mn--N--O moiety is surprisingly bent, and represents the first such distinctly bent metal-NO unit for a natural or synthetic manganese porphyrin complex. Both crystal structures of hh Mn IIIMb(ONO) and hh CoIIIMb(ONO) determined in this work also reveal this unusual nitrito coordination mode. In addition, this surprising result for the cobalt case, when compared with nitrite ligand orientations in related model compounds, demonstrates the importance of the Mb distal pocket in orienting the nitrite towards this O-binding mode.Chapter 2 describes the preparation of the oxo-bridged dimer [Ru(bpb)(NO] 2(mu-O) in 60% isolated yield from the reaction of the known Ru(bpb)(NO)Cl with silver nitrite. The compound exhibits a upsilonNO of 1758 cm -1 (KBr pellet). The crystal structure reveals a linear ON-Ru-O-Ru-NO fragment with the oxo atom serving as an inversion center in the molecule. The redox behavior in DMF is characterized by a reversible reduction followed by a second but irreversible reduction in this solvent.In summary, this dissertation shows that nitric oxide binds to the manganese center in a linear axial fashion in manganese porphyrin model compounds and in a bent tilted fashion in manganese-substituted myoglobin. Nitrite displays the O-binding coordination mode to both manganese model compounds and manganese-substituted myoglobin. Although nitrite exhibits the N-binding coordination mode in all known cobalt model compounds, it shows O-binding mode to cobalt-substituted myoglobin. The O-binding mode that nitrite exhibits to manganese- and cobalt-substituted myoglobin as well as that reported for ferric-myoglobin further demonstrates the crucial role of the distal amino acids in the heme pocket in changing the coordination preferences of ligands to metal center in myoglobin.Chapter 3 describes the syntheses of a new set of six-coordinate manganese nitrosyl porphyrins of the general form (por)Mn(NO)(L) (por = TTP, TPP, T( p-OCH3)PP; L = piperidine, methanol, 1-methylimidazole) in moderate to high yields. The (por)Mn(NO)(pip) complexes were prepared from the reductive nitrosylation of the (por)MnCl compounds with NO in the presence of piperidine. The IR spectra of the (por)Mn(NO)(pip) compounds as KBr pellets show new strong bands at 1746 cm-1 (for TTP) and 1748 cm -1 (for (T(p-OCH3)PP) due to the NO ligands. Attempted crystallization of one of these compounds (por = TTP) from dichloromethane/methanol resulted in the generation of the methanol complex (TTP)Mn(NO)(CH3OH). Reaction of the (por)Mn(NO)(pip) compounds with excess 1-methylimidazole gave the (por)Mn(NO)(1-MeIm) derivatives in good yields. The IR spectra of these compounds show upsilonNO bands that are ∼ 12 cm-1 lower than those of the (por)Mn(NO)(pip) precursors, indicative of greater Mn→ NO pi-backdonation in the 1-MeIm derivatives. X-ray crystal structures of four of these compounds, namely (TTP)Mn(NO)(CH3OH), (TTP)Mn(NO)(1-MeIm), (TPP)Mn(NO)(1-MeIm), and (T(p-OCH3)PP)Mn(NO)(1-MeIm) were obtained, and reveal that the NO ligands in these complexes are linear

Prototyping and evaluating SDN-based multicast architectures for live video streaming [Demo]

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging approach for network programmability, with the capacity to initialize, control, change, and manage network behavior dynamically via open interfaces. The rise of SDN presents an opportunity to overcome the limitations of rigid and static traditional Internet architecture and provide services like inter-domain network layer multicast for live video streaming. In this demonstration we present a platform to evaluate and compare SDN-based multicast architectures for live streaming and benchmark their performance against standard IP unicast. The platform is equipped with two graphical user interfaces (GUI). A Panoramic UI provides a mechanism to modify various evaluation parameters and monitor the effect on output in form of graphs and live statistics. An Animator UI displays traffic flows over the chosen network topology and offers packet level information for the ongoing video streams. We also present a prototype of mCast implemented on our platform. mCast is a novel SDN-based multicast architecture for live video streaming over the Internet. The feedback from our platform and its GUIs showcases how mCast can save network and system resources while improving the video quality for clients

mCast: An SDN-based resource-eficient live video streaming architecture with ISP-CDN collaboration

The rise of Software Defined Networking (SDN) presents an opportunity to overcome the limitations of rigid and static traditional Internet architecture and provide services like network layer multicast for live video streaming. In this paper we propose mCast, an SDN-based architecture for live streaming, to reduce the utilization of network and system resources for both Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Content Delivery Networks (CDN) by using multicast over the Internet. We propose a communication framework between ISPs and CDNs to enable mCast while retaining user and data privacy. mCast is transparent to the clients and maintains the control of CDNs on user sessions. We developed a testbed and performed large scale evaluation and comparison. Results showed that mCast can improve the video quality received by clients and, for CDNs and ISPs in comparison to IP unicast, mCast can decrease link utilization by more than 50% and network losses to 0%

ARBITER: Adaptive rate-based intelligent HTTP streaming algorithm

Dynamic Adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) is widely used by content providers for video delivery and dominates traffic on cellular networks. The inherent variability in both video bitrate and network bandwidth negatively impacts the user Quality of Experience (QoE), motivating the design of better DASH-compliant adaptation algorithms. In this paper we present ARBITER, a novel streaming adaptation algorithm that explicitly integrates the variations in both video and network dynamics in its adaptation decisions. Our simulation-based performance evaluation, using real video content and cellular bandwidth traces, shows that ARBITER achieves an excellent tradeoff among streaming metrics in terms of received video quality, stall count, stall duration, and switching dynamics, leading to a relative improvement of 17-45% in user QoE in comparison to state-of-the-art algorithms

Comparison between Numerical, Analytical, and Field Solutions with Experimental Data for 90º Open Channel Junctions

Junction in open channel flow points out any side water secession from natural or artificial channels. In the last decades, comprehensive theoretical and experimental investigations on the dividing flow in open channel junctions have been executed to understand the characteristics of this separating flow. In this research, a three-dimensional turbulence model by fluent software used to replicate the flow characteristics of a 90º open channel junctions for two geometries. One is with equal width and horizontal bed and the other is field canal junction with irregular section. The modeling is based on the Navier-Stokes equation and κ-ω turbulent model. Comparing prepared to the numerical solution, the analytical model and the field works with published experimental data. The comparison showed that the numerical solution gave good agreements with maximum discrepancy 1.620% for rectangular sections and 0.718% for irregular sections than the published experimental data. The analytical solution gave a large error than numerical with a maximum discrepancy of 2.95% for the rectangular section and 11.485% for irregular sections than the published experimental data. A proposed relation between discharge ratio with upstream Froude number and depth ratio for the irregular section is suggested. The proposed equation has a maximum discrepancy equal to 0.433% with reference to the field data recorded

Sizing network buffers: an HTTP Adaptive Streaming perspective

HTTP Adaptive video Streaming (HAS) is the dominant traffic type on the Internet. When multiple video clients share a bottleneck link many problems arise, notably bandwidth underutilisation, unfairness and instability. Key findings from previous papers show that the "ON-OFF" behaviour of adaptive video clients is the main culprit. In this paper we focus on the network, and specifically the effects of network queue size when multiple video clients share network resources. We conducted experiments using the Mininet virtual network environment streaming real video content to open-source GPAC video clients. We explored how different network buffer sizes, ranging from 1xBDP to 30xBDP (bandwidth-delay-product), affect clients sharing a bottleneck link. Within GPAC, we implemented the published state-of-the-art adaptive video algorithms FESTIVE and BBA-2. We also evaluated impact of web cross-traffic. Our main findings indicate that the "rule-of-thumb" 1xBDP for network buffer sizing causes bandwidth underutilisation, limiting available bandwidth to 70% for all video clients across different round-trip-times (RTT). Interaction between web and HAS clients depends on multiple factors, including adaptation algorithm, bitrate distribution and offered web traffic load. Additionally, operating in an environment with heterogeneous RTTs causes unfairness among ompeting HAS clients. Based on our experimental results, we propose 2xBDP as a default network queue size in environments when multiple users share network resources with homogeneous RTTs. With heterogeneous RTTs, a BDP value based on the average RTTs for all clients improves fairness among competing clients by 60%