Immersive applications such as eXtended Reality (XR), cloud gaming, and real-time video streaming are central to the vision of 6G networks. These applications require not only low latency and high data rates, but also consistent and high-quality User Experience (UX). Traditional rate allocation and congestion control mechanisms in wireless networks treat users uniformly based on channel conditions, rely only on network-centric Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and ignore the content diversity, which can lead to inefficient resource utilization and degraded UX. In this paper, we introduce the concept of Multi-User Content Diversity, which recognizes that different users concurrently consume media with varying complexity, and therefore have different bitrate requirements to achieve satisfactory UX. We propose multiple different frameworks that exploit multi-user content diversity and lead to overall network-wide gains in terms of UX. For each framework, we demonstrate the required information exchange between Application Servers (ASs), Application Clients (ACs), and the network, and the algorithms that run in each of these components to optimize a network-wide UXbased objective. Simulation results demonstrate that exploiting multi-user content diversity leads to significant gains in UX capacity, UX fairness, and network utilization, when compared to conventional rate control methods. These findings highlight the potential of content-aware networking as a key enabler for emerging wireless systems.

翻译：扩展现实（XR）、云游戏和实时视频流等沉浸式应用是6G网络愿景的核心。这些应用不仅需要低延迟和高数据速率，还需要一致且高质量的用户体验（UX）。传统无线网络中的速率分配和拥塞控制机制基于信道条件统一对待用户，仅依赖以网络为中心的关键性能指标（KPI），而忽略了内容多样性，这可能导致资源利用效率低下和用户体验下降。本文引入了多用户内容多样性的概念，认识到不同用户同时消费的媒体具有不同的复杂度，因此需要不同的比特率来实现满意的用户体验。我们提出了多种利用多用户内容多样性的框架，这些框架能够在整个网络范围内提升用户体验。针对每个框架，我们阐述了应用服务器（AS）、应用客户端（AC）与网络之间所需的信息交换，以及在每个组件中运行的算法，以优化基于用户体验的网络整体目标。仿真结果表明，与传统的速率控制方法相比，利用多用户内容多样性能够在用户体验容量、用户体验公平性和网络利用率方面带来显著增益。这些发现凸显了内容感知网络作为新兴无线系统关键使能技术的潜力。