FLATWISE: Flow Latency and Throughput Aware Sensitive Routing for 6DoF VR Over SDN

The next generation of Virtual Reality (VR) applications is expected to provide advanced experiences through Six Degree-of-Freedom (6DoF) technology. However, 6DoF VR applications require latency and throughput guarantees. This article presents a novel intra-domain routing algorithm with throughput guarantees for minimizing the overall end-to-end (E2E) latency for all flows deployed in the network.We investigate the Joint Flow Allocation (JFA) problem to find paths for all flows in a network such that it determines the optimal path for each flow in terms of throughput and latency. The JFA problem is NP-hard. We use a mixed integer linear programming to model the system, along with a heuristic, Flow Latency and Throughput Aware Sensitive Routing (FLATWISE), which is one order of magnitude faster than optimally solving the JFA problem. FLATWISE introduces an adaptive routing approach that dynamically adjusts the path calculation based on E2E latency. The novelty of FLATWISE lies in its unique ability to precisely tune the routing path by either constraining or relaxing the path criteria to align the E2E latency of the selected path with the latency demands of each VR flow. This approach ensures that the latency of the calculated path approximates the latency of each VR flow, enabling more flexible and efficient network routing to meet diverse latency requirements. Our evaluation considers 6DoF VR application flows, which demand high throughput and ultra-low E2E latency. Extensive simulations demonstrate that FLATWISE significantly reduces flow latency, over-provisioned latency, E2E latency, and algorithm execution time when network flows are processed randomly. FLATWISE improves flow throughput and frame rate compared to related work approaches.