UX-aware Rate Allocation for Real-Time Media

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel framework for 6G networks that optimizes user experience (UX) for immersive media by leveraging real-time application data, surpassing traditional KPI-based approaches.

Contribution

It proposes a UX-aware rate allocation framework that uses real-time application feedback to enhance UX guarantees in 6G immersive communications.

Findings

Significantly increases UX capacity compared to conventional algorithms.

Utilizes real-time UX dependency information for better rate control.

Demonstrates improved user experience in simulated 6G scenarios.

Abstract

Immersive communications is a key use case for 6G where applications require reliable latency-bound media traffic at a certain data rate to deliver an acceptable User Experience (UX) or Quality-of-Experience (QoE). The Quality-of-Service (QoS) framework of current cellular systems (4G and 5G) and prevalent network congestion control algorithms for latency-bound traffic like L4S typically target network-related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as data rates and latencies. Network capacity is based on the number of users that attain these KPIs. However, the UX of an immersive application for a given data rate and latency is not the same across users, since it depends on other factors such as the complexity of the media being transmitted and the encoder format. This implies that guarantees on network KPIs do not necessarily translate to guarantees on the UX. In this paper, we propose a framework in which the communication network can provide guarantees on the UX. The framework requires application servers to share real-time information on UX dependency on data rate to the network, which in turn, uses this information to maximize a UX-based network utility function. Our framework is motivated by the recent industry trends of increasing application awareness at the network, and pushing application servers towards the edge, allowing for tighter coordination between the servers and the 6G system. Our simulation results show that the proposed framework substantially improves the UX capacity of the network, which is the number of users above a certain UX threshold, compared to conventional rate control algorithms.