Edge Rendering Architecture for multiuser XR Experiences and E2E Performance Assessment

TL;DR

This paper presents an edge rendering architecture for multiuser XR experiences, focusing on reducing latency and improving synchronization through offloading computation to edge servers, evaluated across various network conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel edge rendering architecture for multiuser XR, implemented with common XR and Web technologies, and proposes a performance evaluation method for end-to-end latency and synchronization.

Findings

Edge rendering reduces media streaming latency.

Improved synchronization across devices and media types.

Effective performance assessment method for XR over different networks.

Abstract

Holographic communications are gaining ground among emerging eXtended-Reality (XR) applications due to their potential to revolutionize human communication. However, these technologies are characterized by higher requirements in terms of Quality of Service (QoS), such as high transmission data rates, very low latency, and high computation capacity, challenging current achievable capabilities. In this context, computation offloading techniques are being investigated, where resource-intensive computational tasks, like rendering XR experiences, are shifted from user devices to a separate processor, specifically an Edge Computing instance. This paper introduces an Edge Rendering architecture for multiuser XR experiences, implements it on top of widely employed XR and Web technologies, and proposes a method based on image and audio processing to evaluate its performance in terms of end-to-end media streaming latency, inter-device, and intra-media synchronization when employing different access networks.