Joint AP and HMD Power Optimization of Sub-THz Virtual Reality Systems

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) systems demand high throughput to enable high-quality video transmission. In the 6 G subnetwork, the sub-THz is a potential candidate for the VR application. At those frequencies, the small wavelength of THz signals enables the realization of the integration of a larger number of antennas compared with mm-wave or low band frequency. How to optimize the power consumption for the access point (AP) and head-mounted displays (HMDs) in the sub-THz band has not yet been studied in the literature. In this paper, a simulation environment has been developed to assess the power consumption of VR communication systems by considering a sub-THz multi-user MIMO system along with a dedicated power model. An optimization problem is written to jointly optimize the average power consumption of the AP and HMD, or either AP or HMDs individually, while meeting the throughput and BER requirements. We explore the trade-off between the complexity of the AP and HMDs, offering insights into system-level design choices for various VR user experiences, considering different video resolutions, compression schemes, antenna configurations, and bandwidth settings. Additionally, we investigated computational offloading from the HMD to the AP, providing a potential energy-saving solution for batteryconstrained HMDs.