Efficient, QoE aware delivery of 360° videos on VR headsets over mobile links

Abstract

Virtual reality headsets have been in a great demand in the past years due to the immersive experience it can now provide to the users. An immersive experience of high quality, however, requires a high bandwidth connection. The latest generation of these headsets support wireless connectivity and rely on a battery to power the headset. With advancements in 5G technology, soon these headsets would be able to connect to the network directly. To provide a similar immersive and uninterrupted experience to the users, the headsets would need to take into account the intermittent behavior of the wireless channel. In this paper we model the streaming of 360° videos on a VR headset using a wireless channel. We model both the intermittent behavior of the wireless channel as well as the prediction of the head position of the user. The MDP based streaming algorithm we present, guarantees a high Quality of Experience (QoE) for the headset users while ensuring that the resource usage is minimised.