3D Holographic Display and

Its Data Transmission Requirement

Xuewu Xu, Yuechao Pan, Phyu Phyu Mar Yi Lwin, and Xinan Liang
Data Storage Institute (DSI), A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research)
5 Engineering Drive 1, Singapore 117608, Singapore

Abstract-In this paper, we briefly introduce the full-color 3D (RGB) lasers, optics for expanding and combining of laser
holographic display system developed in Data Storage Institute. sources, spatial light modulators (SLMs), and optics for
The bandwidth requirement of current system is analyzed to be filtering and magnification of reconstruction. RGB laser
about 10 Gbps. To address this requirement, the network sources are expanded to 50 mm beam size, combined together
interfaces between hologram loading and launching platforms
and expanded again to 80 mm, and finally shined on SLMs.
are developed. Based on our analysis, the bandwidth
requirement will increase to be in the range of 100 Gbps ~ 1 Full-color display is realized by multiplexing RGB holograms
Tbps with the enhancement of system performance. Two launched onto multiple SLMs. When the holograms on SLMs
approaches using hologram data compression and object data are shined with laser light, the fringe patterns in holograms
transmission are discussed in order to solve the high bandwidth will diffract the laser light into intended directions and
requirement problems. reconstruct the 3D object in space [11]. A pair of lenses is
I. INTRODUCTION used after the SLMs to filter off unwanted multiple order
reconstructions, twin image and zero order laser beam. The
Three-dimensional (3D) display can be realized by using same pair of lenses also magnifies the 3D reconstruction to 3
stereoscopic (with glasses), auto-stereoscopic (glasses-free), inch size in diagonal.
volumetric and holographic display technologies [1]. Current The flowchart of hologram transmission for full-color 3D
commercially available 3D display product is based on holographic display demonstrated in this work is shown in
stereoscopic principle, which only utilizes human binocular Fig. 1. RGB holograms are generated from original color 3D
depth perception to create 3D illusion. object data, stored in SSDs on loading platform, read out and
3D holographic display has been considered as an ultimate transmitted to launching platform via network, and finally
glasses-free true-3D display technology because it can launched onto SLMs for 3D object reconstruction.
provide all depth cues and eliminate eye fatigue or visual
discomfort [2-4]. It has been considered as an alternative to III. DATA BANDWIDTH AND STORAGE REQUIREMENTS
current stereoscopic displays on the market [3]. Recently During offline generation of holograms, 3D objects are
streaming holographic videos over network to the display transformed into 2D computer-generated holograms (CGHs)
systems has become an important research topic [5-7]. by a computation program on GPU-based computing
However, transmission of digital holographic 3D videos over platform. The 3D objects are placed inside an object space
network will require high data bandwidth because of its large sampled at 1920 × 1080 × 50 (width × height × depth), which
amount of hologram data [8-10]. also defines the 3D volume sampling in reconstruction space.
In this paper, a full-color 3D holographic display system The holograms used in our display system are binary phase
developed in Data Storage Institute (DSI) is used for the first holograms, and have a dimension of 6400 × 1024 pixels. The
time to demonstrate the digital holographic video computation program uses split look-up tables (S-LUT) on
transmission over 10 Gbps network. After a brief introduction GPUs [12] for fast CGH computation speed. One color bear
to the display system, we report the hologram transmission
flowchart and network architecture. Streaming the
Offline Inline
holographic video of a color 3D dancing bear at 60 fps over Generate holograms Store in SSDs
the above network has been successfully demonstrated. The by GPU-based CGH on loading platform
growing bandwidth requirements (100 Gbps – 1 Tbps) of computation platform
Original Generated SSDs
future 3D holographic display systems are also analyzed and holograms Send via network by
3D data
discussed in view of the enhanced system performance and sending interface on
future network bandwidth capability. Finally we discuss two loading platform
approaches to reduce the bandwidth requirement through Launch onto SLMs for Receive
reconstruction in by receiving interface on
hologram data compression and object data transmission. holographic display launching platform
system Received Network
II. 3D HOLOGRAPHIC DISPLAY SYSTEM Reconstructed
holograms
3D object
We have recently developed a full-color 3D holographic
display system in DSI, which contains red, green and blue Fig. 1. Hologram transmission flowchart for 3D holographic display.
with ~150k 3D object points took us about one second for a
SLM
single-frame CGH computation with current display system Launching
Sending Interface SLM
parameters on 6 nVidia GTX285 GPUs.
After CGH computation, hologram data are formatted into
Loading SLM
blocks according to the format used by SLM in our system. Launching
Each SLM has a pixel count of 1280 × 1024, and the driver of SLM

Network
SLM uses 1 DVI frame of 24bit RGB color to launch 24
binary phase holograms onto the SLM. As a result, each block Launching SLM
of hologram data has the size of ~31.5 Mbit. We can
reconstruct full-color 3D object from a 6.5-Mpixel hologram. Loading Receiving Interface
Within the same DVI frame, 24 holograms are computed with
different random phases added to the same object frame to GUI
reduce laser speckle noise and obtain better reconstruction
quality. This means that the bandwidth is increased to 24
Fig. 2. Architecture of hologram transmission network.
times. The total data bandwidth of a holographic video is 9.44
Gbps at 60 object frames per second (1440 binary holograms
per second). Hologram data are stored in high speed SSDs on
loading platform for high speed readout.
During inline play-back of holographic video, hologram Hologram Data
#END
data are first read out from SSDs and buffered in main
memory of loading PCs. There are 8 physical SSDs on 4 PCIe #BEG Seq# Length
SSD cards in 2 loading PCs. Each physical SSD provides
Hologram Data
281.1 MBps average sequential read speed. The total average
read ability of hologram data is 2.25 GBps, which is sufficient #END
for 9.44 Gbps hologram data bandwidth requirement.
#BEG Seq# Length
After being loaded into the memory on the loading platform
which acts as server on remote site, hologram data are Hologram Data
transmitted via network to the launching platform that is
directly connected with the SLMs in the holographic display Fig. 3. Hologram data package.
system. Details of hologram transmission over network will
be covered in the next section. package length in the unit of byte. The tail has 4 bytes and
After being received and placed in the memory on the only contains 4 byte end mark “#END”. The reason for the
launching platform, holograms are launched onto SLMs for use of TCP/IP data stream is because of its in-order and error
reconstruction of 3D object in the holographic display system. free advantages, which preserve the order and content of
As the driver of SLM uses DVI interface, the SLM is treated hologram data during transmission via network. However,
as a miniaturized display screen and launching of holograms TCP/IP stream is continuous, i.e. packages sent into the
is done by displaying them on the SLM screen. As hologram stream are all connected. The begin mark and the end mark
data are formatted into blocks according to the requirement of are used to signal the beginning and ending of a hologram
SLM after CGH computation, at the point of launching the data package. The sequence number is used to verify the order
hologram data blocks are transferred from the memory to the of hologram data package. It comes out that hologram data
graphic cards in the launching platform as images without any packages are a lways in order after transmission. The length is
modification on data. used to tell the receiving program how much data it should get
from network and treat this block of data as a whole without
IV. HOLOGRAM TRANSMISSION OVER NETWORK
touching it.
In order to meet the 9.44 Gbps bandwidth requirement of After getting application layer header and tail, the
our current 3D holographic display system, we set up a local hologram data package is sent into the network, designated to
network that consists of ten 1-Gbps channels. The network the receiver. On both sending and receiving ends of the
architecture is schematically shown in Fig. 2. A graphical user network, ten GbE connections are used. Each loading PC has
interface (GUI) has also been developed to preview original five GbE connections, each of which is used to carry data for
3D data, to select holographic video from hologram data one SLM. Each SLM uses two GbE connections to receive
loading server, to send commands to play/pause/resume/exit data from the two loading PCs. The network is divided into
holographic videos, and to display hologram data five subnets, in such a way that connections on the same PC
transmission speed over the network. are all in different subnets and each SLM can receive data
After being read out from SSDs, each block of hologram from both loading PCs.
data is packaged with application layer header and tale for After being received from the network, data from TCP/IP
transmission via network using TCP/IP data stream, as shown stream are divided into packages by the begin and end marks.
in Fig. 3. The header has 12 bytes and consists of 4 byte begin Successfully going through sequence number and length
mark “#BEG”, 4 byte package sequence number and 4 byte verification, the application layer header and tail are removed
and the hologram data blocks are recovered. Recovered Network
hologram data blocks will be temporally stored in the main 1 Tbps Bandwidth

memory of launching PCs and eventually launched onto

SLMs for reconstruction of 3D objects. 100 Gbps

In order to demonstrate successful hologram transmission

10 Gbps
over the above described network, we generated a
holographic video (70 GB for 1-min video) by computing 1 Gbps
IEEE 802 Standard
holograms from a 3D model of an animated color dancing Standard Prediction
bear (~150k 3D object points). The transmitted holographic Commercial Product
100 Mbps
Product Prediction
video was smoothly played back at 60 fps with our 3D
Year
holographic display system at a remote site. A snapshot of the 10 Mbps
reconstructed holographic video of the 3D color dancing bear 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020

is shown in Fig. 4, which was captured by a normal 2D 10 Mbps: 4 × 4 inch, color, HPO with 16 views, 1 fps by Arizona Univ. [5]
camera. 1 Gbps: 4.1 × 4.1 mm, color, FP, 30 fps by Chiba Univ. [13]
10 Gbps: 350 mm wide, color, FP, 33 fps by QinetiQ Inc. [14]
10 Gbps: 3 inch, color, FP, 60 fps by DSI
V. BANDWIDTH PROBLEMS 36 Gbps: 150 × 75 mm, monocolor, HPO with 16 views, 15 fps by MIT [6,7]
High data bandwidth requirement is one key issue in the
30 Gbps: 4 × 4 inch, color, FP, 30 fps (predicted with referece to Arizona)
development of holographic display system [10]. If the 60 Gbps: 10 inch, color, FP, 60 fps (DSI)
hologram data are transmitted over network, this requirement 500 Gbps: 150 × 75 mm, color, FP, 30 fps (predicted with referece to MIT)
614 Gbps: 4 × 4 inch, color, FP, 30 fps (predicted with referece to Chiba)
must be fulfilled by the network. It is very important for
future network-based holographic 3D TV broadcasting Fig. 5. Bandwidth requirements vs. IEEE 802 standards and
applications. The requirement relates to various factors such commercial products. HPO - horizontal parallax only; FP - full parallax.
as reconstructed object size, color, parallax and refresh rate.
Various research groups have reported the results of their
holographic display systems. Fig. 5 shows the bandwidth for
1 Tbps Bandwidth requirement
transmitting the hogel data over an Ethernet reported by
Arizona group [5], together with the bandwidth requirements 5.10 G 19.1 G
100 Gbps
analyzed based on the published system parameters from MIT
[6, 7], Chiba [13] and QinetiQ [14] groups by assuming their 755 M 1.19 G
10 Gbps
hologram data are transmitted over network. The prediction
of future bandwidth requirements by referring to the reported 31.5 M 157 M
results is also plotted in Fig. 5 with open symbols. Taking into 1 Gbps Effective pixel count
consideration the future network development, which can be 10 M 100 M 1G 10 G 100 G
represented by IEEE 802 standard [15] and assuming mass Fig. 6. Bandwidth requirement vs. effective pixel count.
market products are available two years after respective IEEE
802 standards are first established, it can be seen from Fig. 5 trend of bandwidth requirement with the increase of effective
that the bandwidth required by holographic display is pixel count. In Fig. 6, the refresh rate is assumed to be 60 fps,
approaching to the highest bandwidth that can be provided by and bit-depth of hologram pixel is assumed to be 1 bit per
available network, or even exceeds future network’s pixel. It is clear that larger effective pixel count introduced by
capability. the advanced development of holographic display system will
Effective pixel count of the holographic display system is continue to boost the bandwidth requirement. It has become a
one key factor that determines the data bandwidth critical issue to be addressed for the broadcasting of
requirement. The enhanced system performance such as holographic videos over network.
larger reconstructed 3D object size, bigger viewing angle,
more colors and parallax effects will increase the effective VI. POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
pixel count of hologram per object frame. The effective pixel In order to achieve practical holographic 3DTV
count multiplied by refresh rate and bit-depth of hologram broadcasting over network in the future, besides developing
pixel defines the bandwidth requirement. Fig. 6 shows the high-bandwidth network technologies, the bandwidth
requirement also needs to be reduced. Two approaches using
hologram data compression and 3D object data transmission
(Fig. 7) could be applied to address this issue.
A. Hologram Data Compression
Hologram data compression for transmission is one method
to reduce the bandwidth requirement, which is suitable for the
holographic display system with architecture similar to that
shown in Fig. 1. In the case of holography, holograms are
Fig. 4. 3D color bear reconstructed from transmitted hologram data. treated as random data because of weak correlations among
 Offline Inline effective pixel count, which is directly related to the system
Reconstruct
Reformat Transmit via CGH performance such as displayed 3D object size, viewing angle
& store network computation and parallax effect. New network technologies need to be
Original SSDs for 3D Received Computed Reconstructed developed to meet such a high bandwidth requirement.
3D data data storage 3D data hologram 3D object
Meanwhile two approaches using hologram data compression
Fig. 7. Flowchart of 3D object data transmission. and 3D object data transmission could be used to reduce the
bandwidth requirement for practical holographic video
hologram pixels. The compression of hologram needs to be transmission over network.
lossless, in order to preserve resolution of hologram. There ACKNOWLEDGMENT
are various lossless random data compression methods, the
This work is supported by Singapore A*STAR SERC
best of which can achieve ~50% compression ratio on average
Home2015 Programme (grant no 0921150116 and grant no
[16]. However, no matter which lossless random data
0921150107). The authors would like to thank Mr. Abel Lum
compression method is used, there are still worst cases when
Zhiming, Mr. Shakith Devinda Fernando and Mr. Koh Shan
hologram data cannot be compressed or even grows in size.
Ming for their contributions to the display system control and
Real-time decompression is required for smooth playback of
GUI application.
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