Research Projects

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) applications using 5G/6G are revolutionizing manufacturing, education, and military training by providing an immersive simulated environment. These features make training less dangerous, more convenient, intuitive, and ultimately less expensive. As India deploys 5G networks, online education, especially laboratory training, with AR/VR innovatively is of interest. Low end-to-end latency is crucial for these applications to be effective and avoid user nausea. Network delay is a major contributing factor to high latency. Multi-Access Edge Computing allows processing and storage of data from devices at the edge of the network, reducing latency. Network Functions (NFs) process each packet to provide safety, optimize network operations, or provide end-user functions. Service Functions (SFs) implement signalling aspects of networks in software. Services can be arranged in a Data Access Group (DAG) to form a Service Function Chain (SFC), which optimizes parameters including latency. As more latency-critical applications become enabled by 5G/6G, scarce resources on edge servers may become insufficient. The application of cache semantics to services is useful, as they can be cached at the edge and replaced when needed. A service cache architecture and associated algorithms for services at the edge will address cache design considering chaining, development of online algorithms to find the least latency path, and creation of multi-level virtualized service caching to improve application latency. While preliminary work has been done, the area remains unexplored. This could lead to game-changing applications in manufacturing, education, and military training.