Multi-Gigabit Interactive Extended Reality over Millimeter-Wave: An End-to-End System Approach

TL;DR

This paper proposes an end-to-end mmWave-based system for high-quality, low-latency mobile XR, evaluating system performance with realistic simulations and introducing the CoVRage beamforming algorithm for highly mobile users.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive simulation framework for mmWave XR systems and introduces the CoVRage beamforming algorithm tailored for mobile XR environments.

Findings

High throughput and low latency are achievable with mmWave for XR.

Beamforming strategy significantly impacts system performance.

CoVRage improves user experience in highly mobile scenarios.

Abstract

Achieving high-quality wireless interactive Extended Reality (XR) will require multi-gigabit throughput at extremely low latency. The Millimeter-Wave (mmWave) frequency bands, between 24 and 300GHz, can achieve such extreme performance. However, maintaining a consistently high Quality of Experience with highly mobile users is challenging, as mmWave communications are inherently directional. In this work, we present and evaluate an end-to-end approach to such a mmWave-based mobile XR system. We perform a highly realistic simulation of the system, incorporating accurate XR data traffic, detailed mmWave propagation models and actual user motion. We evaluate the impact of the beamforming strategy and frequency on the overall performance. In addition, we provide the first system-level evaluation of the CoVRage algorithm, a proactive and spatially aware user-side beamforming approach designed specifically for highly mobile XR environments.