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Augmented Reality (AR) has been widely hailed as a representative of ultra-high bandwidth and ultra-low latency apps that will be enabled by 5G networks. While single-user AR can perform AR tasks locally on the mobile device, multi-user AR apps, which allow multiple users to interact within the same physical space, critically rely on the cellular network to support user interactions. However, a recent study showed that multi-user AR apps can experience very high end-to-end latency when running over LTE, rendering user interaction practically infeasible. In this paper, we study whether 5G mmWave, which promises significant bandwidth and latency improvements over LTE, can support multi-user AR by conducting an in-depth measurement study of the same popular multi-user AR app over both LTE and 5G mmWave. Our measurement and analysis show that: (1) The E2E AR latency over LTE is significantly lower compared to the values reported in the previous study. However, it still remains too high for practical user interaction. (2) 5G mmWave brings no benefits to multi-user AR apps. (3) While 5G mmWave reduces the latency of the uplink visual data transmission, there are other components of the AR app that are independent of the network technology and account for a significant fraction of the E2E latency. (4) The app drains 66% more network energy, which translates to 28% higher total energy over 5G mmWave compared to over LTE.
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Virtual Function Placement and Traffic Steering over 5G Multi-Technology Networks
Next-generation mobile networks (5G and beyond) are expected to provide higher data rates and ultra-low latency in support of demanding applications, such as virtual and augmented reality, robots and drones, etc. To meet these stringent requirements, edge computing constitutes a central piece of the solution architecture wherein functional components of an application can be deployed over the edge network so as to reduce bandwidth demand over the core network while providing ultra-low latency communication to users. In this paper, we investigate the joint optimal placement of virtual service chains consisting of virtual application functions (components) and the steering of traffic through them, over a 5G multi-technology edge network model consisting of both Ethernet and mmWave links. This problem is NP-hard. We provide a comprehensive “microscopic" binary integer program to model the system, along with a heuristic that is one order of magnitude faster than solving the corresponding binary integer program. Extensive evaluations demonstrate the benefits of managing virtual service chains (by distributing them over the edge network) compared to a baseline “middlebox" approach in terms of overall admissible virtual capacity. We observe significant gains when deploying mmWave links that complement the Ethernet physical infrastructure. Moreover, most of the gains are attributed to only 30% of these mmWave links.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1647084
- PAR ID:
- 10082120
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2018 4th IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization and Workshops (NetSoft)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 114 to 122
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/NETSOFT.2018.8460097
