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

Jakob Struye, Filip Lemic, Jeroen Famaey

TL;DR

This paper tackles the challenge of achieving multi-gigabit, ultra-low-latency wireless XR by proposing an end-to-end mmWave system built on IEEE 802.11ay and evaluated through a highly realistic ns-3-based simulation that incorporates ray-traced channels, real user motion, and XR-like traffic. A key contribution is the first full-system evaluation of the CoVRage proactive beamforming algorithm, which uses predicted user pose to synthesize beams along rotation trajectories and delivers robust, low-latency links under rapid mobility. The authors extend the ns-3 mmWave module with CoVRage support, codebook generation for 3D beamforming, and a quasi-deterministic channel model, enabling a comprehensive end-to-end assessment of design choices and beamforming strategies. Their results show that CoVRage can sustain a seven gigabits-per-second XR stream with low frame loss or latency where baseline sector-based and quasi-omni approaches fail, providing actionable guidelines for mmWave XR deployment and highlighting directions for multi-user and hardware validation efforts.

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.

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

TL;DR

This paper tackles the challenge of achieving multi-gigabit, ultra-low-latency wireless XR by proposing an end-to-end mmWave system built on IEEE 802.11ay and evaluated through a highly realistic ns-3-based simulation that incorporates ray-traced channels, real user motion, and XR-like traffic. A key contribution is the first full-system evaluation of the CoVRage proactive beamforming algorithm, which uses predicted user pose to synthesize beams along rotation trajectories and delivers robust, low-latency links under rapid mobility. The authors extend the ns-3 mmWave module with CoVRage support, codebook generation for 3D beamforming, and a quasi-deterministic channel model, enabling a comprehensive end-to-end assessment of design choices and beamforming strategies. Their results show that CoVRage can sustain a seven gigabits-per-second XR stream with low frame loss or latency where baseline sector-based and quasi-omni approaches fail, providing actionable guidelines for mmWave XR deployment and highlighting directions for multi-user and hardware validation efforts.

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.
Paper Structure (16 sections, 5 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 16 sections, 5 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Millimeter-Wave
  4. CoVRage
  5. Related Work
  6. End-to-End Mobile XR System
  7. Design
  8. Implementation
  9. Network
  10. Codebooks
  11. User motion
  12. Experiment Design
  13. Parameters
  14. Metrics
  15. Results and Discussion
  16. ...and 1 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: The Beacon Interval
  • Figure 2: Overview of the simulation's components. Rectangles denote software, rounded rectangles denote datasets, and ovals denote user experiments. Blue indicates existing open-source software which remained largely unaltered, yellow indicates software by this paper's authors previously presented in other work, and green indicates new software (or experiments) implemented (or performed) especially for this work. All datasets were gathered for this work specifically.
  • Figure 3: Rotational velocities, over a 100ms window.
  • Figure 4: Latency for CoVRage vs beamforming baselines at different data rates
  • Figure 5: Further latency evaluations using CoVRage