Efficient Transport Protocol for Networked Haptics Applications

Abstract

The performance of haptic application is highly sensitive to communication delays and losses of data. It implies several constraints in developing networked haptic applications. This paper describes a new internet protocol called Efficient Transport Protocol (ETP), which aims at developing distributed interactive applications. TCP and UDP are transport protocols commonly used in any kind of networked communication, but they are not focused on real time application. This new protocol is focused on reducing roundtrip time (RTT) and inter packet gap (IPG). ETP is, therefore, optimized for interactive applications which are based on processes that are continuously exchanging data.ETP protocol is based on a state machine that decides the best strategies for optimizing RTT and IPG. Experiments have been carried out in order to compare this new protocol and UDP.