Maximizing system reachability for P2P-based interactive spatial audio applications in networked virtual environments

We are interested to provide interactive spatial audio services for networked virtual environments (NVEs) in a peer-to-peer manner. The objective is to maximize the system reachability via efficiently utilizing the network capacities of users. We first propose a helper decomposition algorithm to construct an abstraction layer which consists of helpers formed by participating users. Each user selects a set of helpers that forward the audio streams on behalf of the user. We prove that the system reachability is Schur-concave on the loads of non-occupied helpers. We then propose a game-theoretic algorithm, termed water-fitting, to maximize the system reachability by rapidly balancing the loads of non-occupied helpers. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can achieve a near-optimal system reachability with respect to churn, avatar mobility and unpredictable speaking activity.