Title

Performance analysis of VR streaming under Wi-Fi 6

Lester He

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) gaming refers to running video games on a computer while using a VR headset as the display, which results in a more immersive experience than a monitor. Due to the immersive experience, the user base is expanding [1]. Now VR headset manufactures supports wireless streaming, which imposes a high requirement on both bandwidth (sending the images from the computer to the headset) and latency (sending the user input from the headset to the computer) of the network [2]. However, building a dedicated network for VR streaming [LH1.1]is expensive and may be wasteful. Therefore, to ensure a good quality of experience (QoE) [3] in a shared network, this project first assumes one user is streaming games to their VR headset, while other users are browsing the web or watching videos [4] using the same Wi-Fi 6 network [5], then analyzes how would other users’ traffic affect the VR gaming experience in terms of throughput available to the headset and latency experienced by the headset using ns-3.

Reference

[1] Statista, "Virtual reality (VR) software B2C market revenue worldwide from 2017 to 2028, by segment," Nov. 17, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1337178/vr-software-b2c-market-revenue-worldwide-by-segment/. [Accessed Jan. 10, 2026].
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[4] A. Rao, A. Legout, Y. Lim, D. Towsley, C. Barakat and W. Dabbous, "Network characteristics of video streaming traffic," in CoNEXT '11: Proceedings of the Seventh COnference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies., Dec. 6, 2011, doi: 10.1145/2079296.2079321.
[5] E. Khorov, A. Kiryanov, A. Lyakhov and G. Bianchi, "A Tutorial on IEEE 802.11ax High Efficiency WLANs," in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 197-216, Firstquarter 2019, doi: 10.1109/COMST.2018.2871099.