6DOF Virtual Reality Dataset and Performance Evaluation of Millimeter Wave vs. Free-Space-Optical Indoor Communications Systems for Lifelike Mobile VR Streaming

Dual-connectivity streaming can be a key enabler of next generation 6 Degrees Of Freedom (DOF) Virtual Reality (VR) scene immersion. Indeed, using conventional sub-6 GHz WiFi allows to reliably stream a lower-quality baseline representation of the VR content while emerging communication technologies allow to stream in parallel a high-quality user viewport-specific enhancement representation that synergistically integrates with the baseline representation to deliver high-quality VR immersion. In this paper, we evaluate two candidates emerging technologies, Free Space Optics (FSO) and millimeter-Wave (mmWave), which both offer unprecedented available spectrum and data rates. We formulate an optimization problem to maximize the delivered immersion fidelity of the envisioned dual-connectivity 6DOF VR streaming, which depends on the WiFi and mmWave/FSO link rates, and the computing capabilities of the server and the user's VR headset. The problem is mixed integer programming and we formulate an optimization framework that captures the optimal solution at lower complexity. To evaluate the performance of the proposed systems, we collect actual 6DOF measurements. Our results demonstrate that both FSO and mmWave technologies can enable streaming of 8K-120 frames-per-second (fps) 6DOF content at high fidelity.