A Proof of Concept Resource Management Scheme for Augmented Reality Applications in 5G Systems

Augmented reality applications are bitrate intensive, delay-sensitive, and computationally demanding. To support them, mobile edge computing systems need to carefully manage both their networking and computing resources. To this end, we present a proof of concept resource management scheme that adapts the bandwidth at the base station and the GPU frequency at the edge to efficiently fulfill roundtrip delay constrains. Resource adaptation is performed using a Multi-Armed Bandit algorithm that accounts for the monotonic relationship between allocated resources and performance. We evaluate our scheme by experimentation on an OpenAirInterface 5G testbed where the considered application is OpenRTiST. The results indicate that our resource management scheme can substantially reduce both bandwidth usage and power consumption while delivering high quality of service. Overall, this work demonstrates that intelligent resource control can potentially establish systems that are not only more efficient but also more sustainable.