Communication, Computing, and Caching Trade-Off in VR Networks

Abstract

As technology continues to advance, virtual reality (VR) video services are able to provide an increasingly realistic video experience. VR applications are limited, since the creation of an immersive experience requires processing and delivery of incredibly huge amounts of data. A potential technique to decrease the operation time for VR, as well as its energy use, is mobile edge computing (MEC). In this study, we develop a VR network in which several MEC servers can supply field-of-view (FOV) files to a VR device in order to satisfy the transmission requirements of VR video service and improve the quality of the experience. In this way, the projection process from 2D FOV to 3D FOV and the cached data is possible on an MEC server or a VR device. A cooperative computational offloading and caching strategy is developed as a decision matrix to reduce transmission requirements based on the service time constraint requirement. The VR video service mechanism is examined through the decision matrix. The trade-off between communication, caching, and computation (3C trade-off) is further implemented by means of a closed equation for the decision matrix. Results from simulations show that the suggested technique can perform close to optimally compared to alternative opposing methods.