Edge-Enabled Spatial Audio Service: Implementation and Performance Analysis on a MEC 5G Infrastructure

Spatial audio technologies are becoming a fundamental requirement for guaranteeing immersive auditory experiences in various applications such as Augmented and Virtual Reality up to the Metaverse. With the rise of mobile and edge computing, there is a growing interest in exploring spatial audio algorithms performance on edge infrastructures. This paper presents an evaluation of two different spatial audio algorithms and the potential for offloading the real time spatial audio processing on a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) infrastructure. The presented results were obtained through evaluations performed on a real operator network, and they demonstrate the feasibility of offloading the computation of spatial audio algorithms at the network edge. No difference in terms of performance between the two algorithms was observed under the assumed scenario.