Tightly-coupled interaction is shared work in which each persons actions immediately and continuously influence the actions of others. Tightly-coupled interaction is a hallmark of expert behaviour in face-to-face activity, but becomes extremely difficult to accomplish in distributed groupware. The main cause of this difficulty is network delay even amounts as small as 100ms that disrupts peoples ability to synchronize their actions with another person. To reduce the effects of delay on tightly-coupled interaction, I introduce a new technique called Feedback-Feedthrough Synchronization (FFS). FFS causes visual feedback from an action to occur at approximately the same time for both the local and the remote person, preventing one person from getting ahead of the other in the coordinated interaction. I tested the effects of FFS on group performance in several delay conditions, and my study showed that FFS substantially improved users performance: accuracy was significantly improved at all levels of delay, and without noticeable increase in perceived effort or frustration. Techniques like FFS that support the requirements of tightly-coupled interaction provide new means for improving the usability of groupware that operates on real-world networks.

The Internet supports a diverse number of applications, which have different requirements for a number of services. Next generation networks provide high speed connectivity between hosts, which leaves the service provider to configure network devices appropriately, in order to maximize network performance. Service provider settings are based on best recommendation parameters, which give an opportunity to optimize these settings even further. This dissertation focuses on a packet discarding algorithm, known as random early detection (RED), to determine parameters which will maximize utilization of a resource. The two dominant traffic protocols used across an IP backbone are UDP and TCP. UDP traffic flows transmit packets regardless of network conditions, dropping packets without changing its transmission rates. However, TCP traffic flows concern itself with the network condition, reducing its packet transmission rate based on packet loss. Packet loss indicates that a network is congested. The sliding window concept, also known as the TCP congestion window, adjusts to the amount of acknowledgements the source node receives from the destination node. This paradigm provides a means to transmit data across the available bandwidth across a network. A well known and widely implemented simulation environment, the network simulator 2 (NS2), was used to analyze the RED mechanism. The network simulator 2 (NS2) software gained its popularity as being a complex networking simulation tool. Network protocol traffic (UDP and TCP) characteristics comply with theory, which verifies that the traffic generated by this simulator is valid. It is shown that the autocorrelation function differs between these two traffic types, verifying that the generated traffic does conform to theoretical and practical results. UDP traffic has a short-range dependency while TCP traffic has a long-range dependency. Simulation results show the effects of the RED algorithm on network traffic and equipment performance. It is shown that random packet discarding improves source transmission rate stabilization, as well as node utilization. If the packet dropping probability is set high, the TCP source transmission rates will be low, but a low packet drop probability provides high transmission rates to a few sources and low transmission rates to the majority of other sources. Therefore, an ideal packet drop probability was obtained to complement TCP source transmission rates and node utilization. Statistical distributions were fitted to sampled data from the simulations, which also show improvements to the network with random packet discarding. The results obtained contribute to congestion control across wide area networks. Even though a number of queuing management implementation exists, RED is the most widely used implementation used by service providers. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

Teleoperation system is an important tool to control a device or model in an isolated area remotely where the operator cannot perform the task locally. The vast majority of teleoperation systems provides the operator with visual and haptic control to accomplish the assignment as naturally as possible. However, on a teleoperation system with considerable distance, the time delay could cause a drop in performance. This thesis aims to minimize delay problem by implementing a prediction approach using Kalman Filter. Kalman Filter algorithm has been widely used to estimate user movement for tracking systems. Kalman filter provides an efficient mechanism to predict future state based on Bayesian estimation to sequentially predict future states and measure an actual system to update system parameters. The primary objective of this work is to extract information generated by our prototyping model and visualizing the data to reflect the performance of the system. We use Phantom Omni devices and 3D arm as a model. Different type of Kalman filter algorithms is used to test the accuracy and performance of predicted state generated by the filter. The result shows that the implementation of Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and smoothing function could overcome the networking delay on certain degrees. The comparison shows that the EKF has better accuracy and performance compared to Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) when estimating the future state. Additionally, the implementation of smoothing function could improve the stability of teleoperation system. / Teleoperation systemet är ett viktigt verktyg för att styra en enhet eller modell i ett isolerat område på distans där operatören inte kan utföra uppgiften lokalt. De allra flesta av teleoperation system ger föraren visuell och haptisk kontroll för att utföra uppdraget så naturligt som möjligt. Men på en teleoperation system med stort avstånd, kan tidsfördröjningen medföra en nedgång i prestanda. Denna avhandling syftar till att minimera förseningar problem genom att implementera en förutsägelse tillvägagångssätt med Kalman Filter. Kalman filteralgoritm har i stor utsträckning används för att uppskatta användarens rörlighet för spårning. Kalman filter ger en effektiv mekanism för att förutsäga framtida stat grundad på Bayesian uppskattningen att sekventiellt förutsäga framtida tillstånd och mäta ett verkligt system för att uppdatera systemparametrar. Det primära syftet med detta arbete är att extrahera information som genereras av vår prototypmodell och visualisera data för att återspegla systemets prestanda. Vi använder Phantom Omni enheter och 3D-arm som en modell. Olika typer av Kalman filter algoritmer används för att testa riktigheten och prestandan hos förutsagda tillståndet genereras av filtret. Resultatet visar att genomförandet av Extended Kalman filter (EKF) och utjämningsfunktionen kan övervinna nätverk dröjsmålsvissa grader. Jämförelsen visar att EKF har bättre noggrannhet och prestanda jämfört med Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) vid bedömningen av framtida tillstånd. Dessutom, genomförandet av utjämningsfunktionen skulle kunna förbättra stabiliteten hos teleoperation systemet.

The rapid growth of the Internet and the proliferation of its new applications pose a serious challenge in network performance management and monitoring. The current Internet has no mechanism for providing feedback on network congestion to the end-systems at the IP layer. For applications and their end hosts, end-to-end measurements may be the only way of measuring network performance. Understanding the packet delay and loss behavior of the Internet is important for proper design of network algorithms such as routing and flow control algorithms, for the dimensioning of buffers and link capacity, and for choosing parameters in simulation and analytic studies. In this thesis, round trip time (RTT), one-way network delay and packet loss in the Internet are measured at different times of the day, using a Voice over IP (VoIP) device. The effect of clock skew on one-way network delay measurements is eliminated by a Linear Programming algorithm, implemented in MATLAB. Distributions of one-way network delay and RTT in the Internet are determined. It is observed that delay distribution has a gamma-like shape with heavy tail. It is tried to model delay distribution with gamma, lognormal and Weibull distributions. It is observed that most of the packet losses in the Internet are single packet losses. The effect of firewall on delay measurements is also observed.

A bilateral teleoperation system makes it possible for a human operator to interact with a remote environment and receive feedback from their actions. In this work, two different teleoperation architectures are studied, one well-established approach called position-force, and another approach called Model-Mediated Teleoperation (MMT). Position-force generates force feedback by measuring forces and sending them over the network, subject to network delay, while MMT generates nondelayed force feedback through a local environment model. The two architectures are compared in terms of transparency (quality of force feedback) and state consistency (equivalence of positions) under different network conditions. Up to 150 ms constant delay in Round Trip Time (RTT) is added. Both architectures are implemented as relatively simple versions of themselves. The case (teleoperation task) under consideration is pushing a cuboid object on a planar surface in a single direction. The MMT architecture is also studied in further detail, in terms of model complexity. Two versions of an MMT model are investigated, one simpler model that has a linear representation of energy loss and one less simple model that has a non-linear representation of energy loss. The purpose is to see what implications there are of increasing or decreasing model complexity. The results indicate that position-force has better performance in terms of both transparency and state consistency than both MMT models for all investigated network conditions. The simple version of MMT (linear model) performs better than the non-linear model, in terms of transparency and state consistency of cuboid positions, for all network conditions except the largest added delay. In terms of state consistency for the device positions, the non-linear model only performs better than the linear model with no added delay. / En distansstyrt system med tvåsidig kommunikation gör det möjligt för en mänsklig operatör att interragera med en avlägsen miljö och få återkoppling. I detta arbete studeras två olika arkitekturer för dessa typer av system. Ett väletablerat tillvägagångssätt som kallas position-force, och ett annat som kallas Model-Mediated Teleoperation (MMT). Position-force genererar kraftåterkoppling genom att mäta krafter och skicka dem över nätverket, utsatt för nätverksfördröjningar, medan MMT genererar en icke-fördröjd kraftåterkoppling från en lokalt modellerad miljö. De två arkitekturerna jämförs med avseende på ”transparency” (kvalitén på kraftåterkopplingen) och ”state consistency” (matchning av positioner) under olika nätverksförhållanden. De studerade förhållandena innefattar upp till 150 ms konstant fördröjning i tur och returtid. Båda arkitekturer implementeras som förhållandevis enkla versioner av sig själva. Det studerade fallet (operatörens uppgift) innefattar puttande på ett rätblock på en plan yta i en enkel riktning. MMT arkitekturen studeras även i vidare detalj med avseende på komplexitet hos den lokala modellen. Två versioner av MMT modellen undersöks, en enklare model som har en linjär representation av energiförlust, och en mer avancerad model som har en icke-linjär representation av energiförlust. Avsikten bakom detta är undersöka vilka implikationer som finns när komplexiteten hos modellen höjs eller sänks. Resultaten indikerar att position-force presterar bättre än MMT med avseende på både transparency och state consistency för alla undersökta nätverksfördröjningar. Den linjära MMT modellen presterar bättre än den icke-linjära modellen, med avseende på transparency och state consistency i rätblockspositioner, för alla nätverksförhållnaden utom den största pålagda fördröjningen. Vidare presterar den icke-linjära modellen bättre än den linjära modellen, med avseende på state consistency för styrande/styrd apparat, endast då ingen nätverksfördröjning läggs på.

This work is to investigate the performance of two Kalman Filter Algorithms, namely Linear Kalman Filter and Extended Kalman Filter on control-based human motion prediction in a real-time teleoperation. The Kalman Filter Algorithm has been widely used in research areas of motion tracking and GPS-navigation. However, the potential of human motion prediction by utilizing this algorithm is rarely being mentioned. Combine with the known issue - the delay issue in today’s teleoperation services, the author decided to build a prototype of simple teleoperation model based on the Kalman Filter Algorithm with the aim of eliminated the unsynchronization between the user’s inputs and the visual frames, where all the data were transferred over the network. In the first part of the thesis, two types of Kalman Filter Algorithm are applied on the prototype to predict the movement of the robotic arm based on the user’s motion applied on a Haptic Device. The comparisons in performance among the Kalman Filters have also been focused. In the second part, the thesis focuses on optimizing the motion prediction which based on the results of Kalman filtering by using the smoothing algorithm. The last part of the thesis examines the limitation of the prototype, such as how much the delays are accepted and how fast the movement speed of the Phantom Haptic can be, to still be able to obtain reasonable predations with acceptable error rate.   The results show that the Extended Kalman Filter has achieved more advantages in motion prediction than the Linear Kalman Filter during the experiments. The unsynchronization issue has been effectively improved by applying the Kalman Filter Algorithm on both state and measurement models when the latency is set to below 200 milliseconds. The additional smoothing algorithm further increases the accuracy. More important, it also solves shaking issue on the visual frames on robotic arm which is caused by the wavy property of the Kalman Filter Algorithm. Furthermore, the optimization method effectively synchronizes the timing when robotic arm touches the interactable object in the prediction.   The method which is utilized in this research can be a good reference for the future researches in control-based human motion tracking and prediction. / Detta arbete fokuserar på att undersöka prestandan hos två Kalman Filter Algoritmer, nämligen Linear Kalman Filter och Extended Kalman Filter som används i realtids uppskattningar av kontrollbaserad mänsklig rörelse i teleoperationen. Dessa Kalman Filter Algoritmer har används i stor utsträckning forskningsområden i rörelsespårning och GPS-navigering. Emellertid är potentialen i uppskattning av mänsklig rörelse genom att utnyttja denna algoritm sällan nämnas. Genom att kombinera med det kända problemet – fördröjningsproblem i dagens teleoperation tjänster beslutar författaren att bygga en prototyp av en enkel teleoperation modell vilket är baserad på Kalman Filter algoritmen i syftet att eliminera icke-synkronisering mellan användarens inmatningssignaler och visuella information, där alla data överfördes via nätverket. I den första delen av avhandlingen appliceras både Kalman Filter Algoritmer på prototypen för att uppskatta rörelsen av robotarmen baserat på användarens rörelse som anbringas på en haptik enhet. Jämförelserna i prestandan bland de Kalman Filter Algoritmerna har också fokuserats. I den andra delen fokuserar avhandlingen på att optimera uppskattningar av rörelsen som baserat på resultaten av Kalman-filtrering med hjälp av en utjämningsalgoritm. Den sista delen av avhandlingen undersökes begräsning av prototypen, som till exempel hur mycket fördröjningar accepteras och hur snabbt den haptik enheten kan vara, för att kunna erhålla skäliga uppskattningar med acceptabel felfrekvens.   Resultaten visar att den Extended Kalman Filter har bättre prestandan i rörelse uppskattningarna än den Linear Kalman Filter under experimenten. Det icke-synkroniseringsproblemet har förbättrats genom att tillämpa de Kalman Filter Algoritmerna på både statliga och värderingsmodeller när latensen är inställd på under 200 millisekunder. Den extra utjämningsalgoritmen ökar ytterligare noggrannheten. Denna algoritm löser också det skakande problem hos de visuella bilder på robotarmen som orsakas av den vågiga egenskapen hos Kalman Filter Algoritmen. Dessutom effektivt synkroniserar den optimeringsmetoden tidpunkten när robotarmen berör objekten i uppskattningarna.   Den metod som används i denna forskning kan vara en god referens för framtida undersökningar i kontrollbaserad rörelse- spåning och uppskattning.

With increasing access to interconnected IP networks, people demand a faster response time from Internet services. Traffic from web browsing, the second most popular service, is particularly time-sensitive. This demands reliability and a guarantee of delivery with a good quality of service from ISPs. Additionally, the majority of the population do not have the technical background to monitor the delay themselves from their home networks, and their ISPs do not have a vantage point to monitor and diagnose network problems from the users’ perspective. Hence, the aim for this research was to characterise the “in-protocol” network delay encountered during web browsing from within a LAN. This research presents TCP traffic monitoring performed on a client device as well as TCP traffic monitoring over both the client-end and the server-end devices separately observing an automated web client/server communication. This was followed by offline analysis of the captured traces where each TCP flow was dissected into: handshake, data transfer, and teardown phases. The aim behind such extraction was to enable characterisation of network round-trip delay as well as network physical delay, end host processing delay, web transfer delay, and packets lost as perceived by the end hosts during data transfer. The outcome of measuring from both end devices showed that monitoring from both ends of a client/server communication results to a more accurate measurement of the genuine delay encountered when packets traverse the network than when measuring from the client-end only. Primarily, this was concluded through the ability to distinguish between the pure network delay and the kernel processing delay experienced during the TCP handshake and teardown. Secondly, it was confirmed that the two RTTs identified in a TCP handshake are not symmetrical and that a TCP teardown RTT takes longer than the TCP handshake RTT within the same TCP flow since a server must take measures to avoid SYN flooding attacks. Thirdly, by monitoring from both end devices, it was possible to identify routing path asymmetries by calculating the physical one-way delay a packet using the forward path in comparison to the physical delay of a packet using the reverse path. Lastly, by monitoring from both end devices, it is possible to distinguish between a packet that was actually lost and a packet that arrived with a higher delay than its subsequent packet during data transfer. Furthermore, utilizing TCP flows to measure the RTT delay excluding end host processing gave a better characterisation of the RTT delay as opposed to using ICMP traffic. / Med ökande tillgång till den sammankopplade IP-nätet, krävs det en snabbare responstid från Internettjänster. Trafik från surfning, den näst mest populära tjänsten är särskilt tidskänsliga. Detta kräver tillförlitlighet och en garanti för data leverans med en god servicekvalitet från Internetleverantörer. Dessutom har de flesta av befolkningen inte den tekniska bakgrunden för att övervaka fördröjning sig från sina hemmanätverk, och deras Internetleverantörer har ingen utsiktspunkt för att övervaka och diagnostisera nätverksproblem från användarnas perspektiv. Därför syftet med denna forskning är att karakterisera “in-protokoll”  fördöljingen i nätet, som påträffas under surfning inifrån ett LAN. Denna forskning visar TCP-trafik monitoring som utförs på en klientenhet, samt separat TCP-trafik monitoring över både klient-end och serve-end enheter, för att observera en automatiserad webbklient / server-kommunikation. Detta följs av offline analys av de infångade tracer där varje TCP flöde dissekerades in: handskakning, dataöverföring, och nedkoppling faser. Syftet bakom sådan utvinning är att möjliggöra karakterisering av nätverk fördröjning samt nätverkets fysiska fördröjning, behandlingsfördröjning, webböverföringsfördröjning och förlorade paket som uppfattas av end-device under dataöverföring. The outcome of measuring from both end devices showed that monitoring from both ends of a client/server communication results to a more accurate measurement of the genuine delay encountered when packets traverse the network than when measuring from the client-end only. Primarily, this was concluded through the ability to distinguish between the pure network delay and the kernel processing delay experienced during the TCP handshake and teardown. Secondly, it was confirmed that the two RTTs identified in a TCP handshake are not symmetrical and that a TCP teardown RTT takes longer than the TCP handshake RTT within the same TCP flow since a server must take measures to avoid SYN flooding attacks. Thirdly, by monitoring from both end devices, it was possible to identify routing path asymmetries by calculating the physical one-way delay a packet using the forward path in comparison to the physical delay of a packet using the reverse path. Lastly, by monitoring from both end devices, it is possible to distinguish between a packet that was actually lost and a packet that arrived with a higher delay than its subsequent packet during data transfer. Furthermore, utilizing TCP flows to measure the RTT delay excluding end host processing gave a better characterisation of the RTT delay as opposed to using ICMP traffic. Resultatet av mätningarna från både slut-enheter visar att övervakning från båda ändar av en klient / server-kommunikation resulterar  en noggrannare mätning av fördröjningar som uppstår när paketen färdas över nätverket än vid mätning från den enda klienten. Främst avslutades detta genom förmågan att skilja mellan den rena nätfördröjningen och kernel bearbetning under TCP handskakning och nedkoppling. För det andra bekräftades att de två RTT som identifierats i en TCP handskakning inte är symmetriska och att TCP nedkoppling RTT är längre än TCP handskakning RTT inom samma TCP flödet, eftersom servern  måste vidta åtgärder för att undvika SYN översvämning attacker. För det tredje, genom att övervaka från båda avancerade enheter, var det möjligt att identifiera path asymmetrier genom att beräkna den fysiska envägsfördröjningen av ett paket på framåtriktade banan i jämförelse med den fysiska fördröjningen för ett paket på den omvända banan. Slutligen genom att övervaka från båda end enheter, är det möjligt att skilja mellan ett paket som faktiskt förlorades och ett paket som kom med en högre fördröjning än dess efterföljande paket under dataöverföring. Dessutom utnyttjande av TCP flöden för att mäta RTT exkluderat end-nod porocessering gav en bättre karakterisering av RTT fördröjning jämfört med att ICMP-trafik.

最近，金融科技(FinTech)和行動金融服務，吸引越來越多的目光。新的創新金融科技服務，改變了金融服務的消費行為。行動網路的發展使人們能夠隨時隨地的享受行動銀行的服務已經是個不爭的事實。然而，由於無線網路先天的特性以及行動裝置的移動性，使行動金融的服務品質受到網路不穩定的影響。而且，隨著Bank 3.0時代的來臨，將會有大量的使用者同時使用行動金融服務，特別是在股市開盤以及重大訊息揭露的時候。因著大量使用者瞬間湧入，以及無線網路不穩定的影響，交易系統的效能很可能會時好時壞，所以無法滿足即時金融市場的需求。 本論文中，我們提出「行動銀行訊息即服務」的框架，使系統能夠很容易的水平擴充，並且能夠輕易的實現雙向通訊和雙向交易等多項行動金融服務。為了達到最少成本追求最大利益的目的，我們發展了能夠適應突發流量以及網路不穩定性的任務分配演算法，使得不用增加額外硬體成本的前提下改善系統效能。然後，為了實驗欲模擬大量行動裝置的使用者，我們觀察真實網路的特性並發明了網路延遲自相關模型來驗證我們提出的任務分配演算法。結果顯示，透過此任務分配演算法，確實能夠有效改善系統資源管理的能力。最後，本研究將系統佈署於真實網路環境當中，並且發現進行同樣實驗的結果與採用網路延遲自相關模型的實驗結果一致。因此，本研究間接驗證了網路自相關模型的正確性，以及證明本任務分配演算法，在突發流量和網路不穩定的即時行動金融服務環境下，能有效降低系統響應時間。 / FinTech (financial technology) and mobile financial services are getting more and more attention recently. New innovative FinTech services change the consumption behavior for financial services. It is an indisputable fact development of the mobile Internet allows people to enjoy mobile banking everywhere and anytime. However, due to the nature of wireless networking and the mobility of the mobile device, the quality of mobile financial service will be affected by network instability. Moreover, with the coming of Bank 3.0, a huge amount of users would be in the mobile service of finance simultaneously, especially when the instances of the stock market opening or disclosure of highly important financial message. As the result of bursty traffic and network instability, the performance of transaction system is up and down, making it tough to satisfy the demand of real-time financial markets. In this thesis, we propose a “Mobile Banking Messaging as a Service Framework” that can easily scale out and fulfill functions comprising Bilateral Communication, Bilateral Trading, and many other mobile financial services. To pursuit of the greatest benefit along with investment of the least resources, we develop the task assignment algorithm which can adapt the system to bursty traffic and unstable networks to improve performance for free. Then, in order to simulate a large number of mobile users, we observe the characteristic of real-world network delay and propose a network delay autocorrelation model to verify our task assignment algorithm. The results of experiment show that we could actually use our task assignment algorithm to improve the ability of the system to manage resource. Finally, we deploy our system in a real-world network delay environment and find that the results obtained in the real condition are the same with our simulation results. Therefore, this research can indirectly verify the correctness of the network delay autocorrelation model, and prove that our task assignment algorithm can effectively reduce the system response time for real-time mobile financial service system under bursty traffic and unstable networks.