Assessing 5G Connectivity in Medical Extended Reality (MXR) Applications: A Testbed Approach.

The fifth generation (5G) cellular network is an enabler of connectivity that promises to facilitate technical innovations in many industry verticals. In the healthcare sector, the rapidly evolving medical extended reality (MXR) applications can benefit from 5G connectivity to deliver virtual content while achieving seamless mobility. In this paper, we address the challenges of testing 5G connectivity in MXR applications by showcasing an example MXR application setup (i.e., a virtual clinical room) and incorporating it into a 5G network testbed. This paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of the connectivity requirements and the potential impact of 5G network configurations on MXR by collecting communication traffic between different network entities. Experimental results offer insight into the traffic behavior of the MXR application and its supporting connectivity infrastructure.