Gabriel-Miro Muntean

• PhD
• Professor at Dublin City University

The exponential growth of data-hungry apps has led to an enormous increase in global data traffic. The recent worldwide pandemic has also significantly contributed to changing traffic patterns due to overloaded macrocells in the suburban residential areas, creating load balancing issues. 5G technology along with Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets), co...

The recent global pandemic has transformed the way education is delivered, increasing the importance of video-based online learning. However, this puts a significant pressure on the underlying communication networks and the limited available bandwidth needs to be intelligently allocated to support a much higher transmission load, including video-ba...

Consuming immersive content over a browser is possible due to libraries such as WebGL, WebXR and Three.js. 360° videos, however, are very large in size, and high definition content can cause buffering events even in environments with high bandwidth. Immersiveness is further achieved in 360° content delivery with the addition of ambisonic audio, whi...

This paper presents, describes and evaluates the Machine Learning Performance Monitor (MLPM), an innovative Machine Learning (ML) approach to forecast and extrapolate the performance of several network features (e.g., latency, throughput) in a Multipath TCP(MPTCP) subflow pool. MLPM uses linear regression to predict the performance of network featu...

The current global pandemic crisis has unquestionably disrupted the higher education sector, forcing educational institutions to rapidly embrace technology-enhanced learning. However, the COVID-19 containment measures that forced people to work or stay at home, have determined a significant increase in the Internet traffic that puts tremendous pres...

Abstract The centralized architecture of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) reduces networking complexity and improves network manageability by omitting the need for box-by-box troubleshooting and management. However, due to both budget constraints and maturity level of the SDN-capable devices, organizations often are reluctant to adopt SDN in pract...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing network of physical objects where the devices are connected to the Internet through unique addressing schemes and multiple protocols. The increase of IoT devices in the recent years presents significant challenges in terms of security, authentication and usability. The recently introduced Social Internet of...

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 tech...

Blockchain is disrupting several sectors as it continues to grow mainstream. The attraction for Blockchain is increasing from various application domains looking to take advantage of its immutability, security, cost-saving, transparency and fast processing properties. Blockchain has empowered several sectors to upgrade their existing systems or ope...

Base station caching and multicast are two promising methods to support mass content delivery in future wireless network environments. However, existing scheduling designs do not take full advantage of the two methods. This article focuses on employing multicast scheduling and caching in a network architecture which involves both macro cell base st...

The outstanding increase in video traffic, puts increasing pressure on network transmission. Since the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) adjusts the delivery to the dynamic network conditions, it has emerged as a popular approach for video transmissions. However, bitrate switching and video rebuffering may still occur and influence negati...

Recently, innovative technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Multi-Sensorial Media (mulsemedia) have introduced new sensorial effects including vibration, smell, airflow, etc. to human life. These effects were mostly deployed for entertainment gaming) and have resulted in positive user satisfaction....

The integration of SDN into legacy networks causes both operational and deployment issues. In this context, this paper proposes a novel approach, called An Intelligent Solution for Improved Performance of Reliable and Time-sensitive Flows in Hybrid SDN-based Fog Computing IoT Systems (IHSF). The proposed IHSF approach has three solutions: (i) a nov...

The integration of SDN into legacy networks causes both operational and deployment issues. In this context, this paper proposes a novel approach, called An Intelligent Solution for Improved Performance of Reliable and Time-sensitive Flows in Hybrid SDN-based Fog Computing IoT Systems (IHSF). The proposed IHSF approach has three solutions: (i) a nov...

This paper investigates the possibility of co-channel secondary transmission over the operational digital terrestrial video (DTV) broadcast bands within the interference limits of the DTV receivers. Aided by emulated DTV transmission experiments, secondary transmission-caused interference to the DTV receiver is analyzed in the context of a DTV netw...

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 hel...

The integration of a broadcast oriented RAN architecture into a convergent framework for heterogeneous networks offers two major contributions. On the one hand, it presents an interesting solution to satisfy the exponential growth of the mobile video data traffic, and on the other hand, it is also identified as a promising key technology, that can...

Multimedia delivery support has recently been added to Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and has led to increased interest in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSN). WMSNs are expected to be crucial to the success of applications related to the Internet of Things (IoT), such as smart health, smart surveillance, smart homes, etc. Alongside their im...

The massive growth in mobile data traffic and the heterogeneity and stringency of Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of various applications have put significant pressure on the underlying network infrastructure and represent an important challenge even for the very anticipated 5G networks. In this context, the solution is to employ smart Radio...

The latest advances in terms of network technologies open up new opportunities for high-end applications, including using the next generation video streaming technologies. As mobile devices become more affordable and powerful, an increasing range of rich media applications could offer a highly realistic and immersive experience to mobile users. How...

By the envision of combing smooth viewing experience with high-efficiency content distribution, dynamic adaptive streaming (DAS) over information-centric networking (ICN) is becoming a promising trend for the future video services. However, optimizations of DAS flow transmission control and rate adaptation need to be revisited for better adopting t...

Cloud and IoT technologies have the potential to enable a plethora of new applications that are not strictly limited to remote sensing, data collection, and data analysis. In such a context, the IoT paradigm can be seen as an empowering technology rather than a disruptive one since it has the capability to improve the standard business processes by...

The recent growth in both number of high specification mobile devices and network multimedia data demand, has made difficult supporting access to the multimedia content at high user Quality of Experience (QoE) levels. It is even more challenging to support offering such services adjusted to user specific requirements in current heterogeneous wirele...

Contribution: The NEWTON fabrication laboratory (Fab Lab) Education Initiative assesses the effectiveness of Fab Lab-based learning on K-12 students' attitude toward learning science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM). It considers two aspects: 1) students' motivation and affective state and 2) students' observations and percept...

Recently, Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Lab) have been shown to have a great impact on learners’ academic and personal progress. As a result, an increasing effort is being put to integrate Fab Labs into schools’ curricula. Yet, owing to the high cost of setting-up and maintaining Fab Labs as well as the lack of sufficient funding for most schools a...

The advent and increased use of new technologies, such as innovative mulsemedia and multi-modal content distribution mechanisms, have brought new challenges and diverse opportunities for technology enhanced learning (TEL). NEWTON is a Horizon 2020 European project that revolutionizes the educational process through innovative TEL methodologies and...

Abstract Cloud and IoT technologies have the potential to support applica- tions that are not strictly limited to technical fields. This paper shows how digital fabrication laboratories (Fab Labs) can leverage cloud technologies to enable resource sharing and provide remote access to distributed expensive fabrication resources over the internet. We...

Quality of Experience (QoE) reflects end users' overall experience and feeling with network services, but needs support in terms of end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS). Segment routing (SR) as a new routing paradigm can provide good end-to-end QoS guarantee, making traditional multimedia traffic routing more efficient and scalable. In this paper, w...

Virtual Reality (VR) is currently being used in many different areas such as car prototyping, gaming, medical training, teaching, etc. Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as systems-on-a-chip (e.g. Raspberry Pi), smart appliances and sensors support a wide range of services, including machine automation, remote monitoring and control. This paper...

This paper describes research conducted part of the EU Horizon 2020-funded project NEWTON with the aim of investigating how multimedia adaptation can affect their knowledge acquisition. A pilot test was carried out in Dublin City University involving 42 undergraduate students. Various questionnaires have been used to collect students’ data, includi...

Increasing number of researchers are focusing on the emerging communication technologies which enrich user perceived quality of experience by involving vision, auditory, tactile, olfaction, gustatory and other senses. However, there are multiple challenges related to using multiple sensorial media (i.e. mulsemedia), including synchronization with t...

Abstract This paper presents the findings of a study carried out as part of the EU Horizon 2020-funded project NEWTON in the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava with 48 undergraduate students. The purpose of the study is to learn how multimedia adaptation influences participants’ knowledge gain and learning satisfaction. Multimedia adapta...

Nowadays school curriculum is changing and more and more teachers are incorporating STEM content and themes into their classrooms. Students need to be proficient in STEM fields in order to be ready for the new technology driven society. Game-based learning and the latest visual technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Virtual Lab...

Fabrication as a Service (FaaS) is a new concept developed within the framework of the NEWTON Horizon 2020 project. It is aimed at empowering digital fabrication laboratories (Fab Labs) by providing hardware and software wrappers to expose numerically-controlled expensive fabrication equipment as web services. More specifically, FaaS leverages clou...

In 5G networks context, both multicast transmissions and dense heterogeneous networks (DenseNet) will be beneficial for improving resource utilization, and increasing coverage and system capacity. Nevertheless, they raise several issues about interference coordination, power consumption, radio resource management and load balancing. In this paper,...

Virtual labs enable inquiry-based learning where students can implement their own experiments using virtual objects and apparatus. Although the benefits of adaptive and personalised learning are well recognised, these were not thoroughly investigated in virtual labs. This paper presents the architecture of an interactive science virtual lab that pe...

Given the shortcomings of traditional networks, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is considered as the best solution to deal with the constant growth of mobile data traffic. SDN separates the data plane from the control plane, enabling network scalability and programmability. Initial SDN deployments promoted a centralized architecture with a single...

There is an important trend in terms of user expectations of ubiquity in relation to rich media services and increase in number and range of devices with high specifications which enable access to such services, with very ambitious technical requirements. Providing this support is a very challenging issue, especially in urban dense network environm...

Virtual Reality (VR) allows users to interact with intuitive environments to manipulate games, applications and even other Internet of Things (IoT) devices. VR devices have been brought to users by different vendors, supporting different development platforms and features. Many VR applications, however, do not support simultaneous VR devices from d...

There is an increasing user demand for high-quality content-rich multimedia services. Despite their advantages, current wireless networks in general and wireless mesh networks in particular have limitations in terms of quality of service (QoS) provisioning, especially when dealing with increased amounts of time sensitive traffic such as video. This...

The next generation network environment is expected to include networks of diverse types, associated with heterogeneous performance. At the same time, this heterogeneous network environment will be used to deliver various services with different requirements. In order to support high quality of experience for the users availing from these services,...

This chapter highlights the importance of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) in the context of the 5G-enabled smarter cities and roads, a topic that attracts significant interest. In order for VANETs and its associated applications to become a reality, a very promising avenue is to bring together multiple wireless technologies in the architectural...

In the ever-evolving telecommunication industry, smart mobile computing devices have become increasingly affordable and powerful, leading to significant growth in the number of advanced mobile users and their bandwidth demands. Due to this increasing need, the next generation of wireless networks needs to enable solutions to bring together broadban...

The latest increasing popularity of High-Speed Railways (HSR) has stimulated growing demands for wireless Internet services in HSR networks, especially for video streaming. However, due to the highly variable and unpredictable wireless communications in HSR networks, it is still difficult for the existing solutions to provide high-quality video str...

Mulsemedia—multiple sensorial media—makes possible the inclusion of layered sensory stimulation and interaction through multiple sensory channels. The recent upsurge in technology and wearables provides mulsemedia researchers a vehicle for potentially boundless choice. However, in order to build systems that integrate various senses, there are stil...

Given the shortcomings of traditional networks, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is considered as the best solution to deal with the constant growth of mobile data traffic. SDN separates the data plane from the control plane, enabling network scalability and programmability. Initial SDN deployments promoted a centralized architecture with a single...

In this paper, we describe an ongoing educational program, called NEWTON FabLab STEM, developed by the EU Horizon 2020 NEWTON project team. It aims at evaluating the impact of using digital fabrication as a support tool to raise students’ interest in STEM subjects. We also present a case study of a small-scale pilot test that was deployed at Saint...

In order to create an improved learning experience in variable network delivery conditions, multimedia content adjustment is performed when delivered over existing network environments. This paper introduces a study of user learning when multimedia-based study material is distributed at different quality levels in the context of the European Horizo...

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 propos...

Internet of Things (IoT) networks handle multiple data types generated by numerous types of devices, with the additional challenge of delivering this data at high QoS levels. A great number of IoT applications require real-time updates and fresh data, in areas such as health, vehicular, UAVs and sensor monitoring (temperature, acceleration, motion,...

Virtual Reality (VR) can be used for many applications in diverse fields such as engineering, gaming, healthcare, education, etc. Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including CCTV monitoring cameras and smart watches, support diverse services including providing sensor data, intelligence in appliances and multimedia. This paper proposes and describe...