Cutting the Cord in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Today's virtual reality (VR) headsets require a cable connection to a PC or game console. This cable significantly limits the player's mobility and hence her VR experience. The high data rate requirement of this link (multiple Gbps) precludes its replacement by WiFi. In this paper, we focus on using mmWave technology to deliver multi Gbps wireless communication between VR headsets and their game consoles. The challenge, however, is that mmWave signals can be easily blocked by the player's hand or head motion. We describe a novel system design and algorithms that allow mmWave links to sustain high data rates even in the presence of blockage, enabling a high-quality untethered VR experience.

Virtual Reality Over Wireless Networks: Quality-of-Service Model and Learning-Based Resource Management

“…The existing literature has studied a number of problems related to VR such as in [2], [4]- [13]. The authors in [2] and [4] provided qualitative surveys that motivate the deployment of VR over wireless systems, but these works do not provide any mathematically rigorous modeling.…”

Towards Gesture-Based Multi-User Interactions In Collaborative Virtual Environments

“…The first three solutions do not have embedded processing units and need a wired link to a computer to process the data. Although there are mechanisms to make the link wireless using mmWave multi-Gbps data rates, the HMDs still need to be in the antenna's line-of-sight due to the large bandwidth requirement, and thus occlusions can cause communication interruptions (Abari et al, 2016). Gear VR and Cardboard use smartphones as fully-embedded HMDs, thus they do not require a wired connection to a computer.…”

Beam-Steering Performance of Flat Luneburg Lens at 60 GHz for Future Wireless Communications

“…With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) adding huge numbers of devices requiring bandwidth to an alreadychallenging push for even greater data rates to be supported on personal wireless terminals, considerable research effort is being invested into future wireless networks. High-data rate applications include the streaming of ultrahigh definition video and virtual and augmented reality (e.g., [1,2]); the use of 60 GHz for these applications is now relatively wellestablished, with IEEE standards (e.g., 802. 15.3c, 802.11ad [3]) well-suited for this aspect of 5G services and networks.…”

“…With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) adding huge numbers of devices requiring bandwidth to an alreadychallenging push for even greater data rates to be supported on personal wireless terminals, considerable research effort is being invested into future wireless networks. High-data rate applications include the streaming of ultrahigh definition video and virtual and augmented reality (e.g., [1,2]); the use of 60 GHz for these applications is now relatively wellestablished, with IEEE standards (e.g., 802.15.3c, 802.11ad[3]) well-suited for this aspect of 5G services and networks.Other aspects of 5G development are concerned with serving greater numbers of end-terminals and reducing latency, with some applications in the IoT relevant to this (even when data rate requirements are not severe).A large number of technologies are being brought together to achieve the various aims for the next generation of wireless networks [4]. This includes the use of small cells (where the density of base stations is increased), cooperative communications (where interference is reduced via communication between nodes, to improve achievable data rates and reliability), carrier aggregation (where bandwidth from disparate channels is combined to meet requirements), and heterogeneous networks (where multiple networks operating at different frequencies and with different modulations, etc., are used).…”