Temporal Characterization and Prediction of VR Traffic: A Network Slicing Use Case

Over the past few years, the concept of Virtual Reality (VR) has attracted increasing interest thanks to its extensive industrial and commercial applications. Currently, the 3D models of the virtual scenes are generally stored in the VR visor itself, which operates as a standalone device. However, applications that entail multi-party interactions will likely require the scene to be processed by an external server and then streamed to the visors. However, the stringent Quality of Service (QoS) constraints imposed by the VR's interactive nature require Network Slicing (NS) solutions, for which profiling the traffic generated by the VR application is crucial. To this end, we collected more than 4 hours of traces in a real setup and analyzed their temporal correlation, focusing on the Constant Bit Rate (CBR) encoding mode, which should generate more predictable traffic streams. From the collected data, we then distilled two prediction models for future frame size, which can be instrumental in the design of dynamic resource allocation algorithms. Our results show that even the state-of-the-art H.264 CBR mode may have significant frame size fluctuations, impacting NS optimization. We then exploited the models to dynamically determine requirements in an NS scenario, providing the required QoS while minimizing resource usage.