5G and Edge Computing Enabling Experience Delivery Network (XDN) for Immersive Media

Abstract

With 5G and Edge Computing, media services observe a very big revolution nowadays. LTE led to media services evolution through enabling video streaming anytime, anywhere, and to any connected mobile device. CDN offered HTTP-based solutions for media streaming services, however real-time communication (RTC) and interactive traffic are not fully supported. 5G and Edge Computing are now enabling new experience through an Experience Delivery Network (XDN), where content creation is in real-time, on the fly and equally uses upstream and downstream links. Real-time Communication (RTC) with 5G and Edge Computing allows negligible latency between the communicating parties and is promising not only for immersive media, but also for Cloud Gaming and Tele-health applications. In this paper, we present a 360 Immersive Media solution using Intel-incubated Open WebRTC Toolkit (OWT) and edge computing platforms, while allowing media ingestion over 5G networks from multiple cameras, media control and 360 media distribution over 5G networks. Microservices architecture is used for media ingestion, control, and distribution functions, allowing the solution deployment across multiple edge computing clusters and sites. We implemented a prototype for our solution, and we present a performance evaluation showing the gain in terms of bandwidth and latency besides the modular deployment.