Reaching Toward the Metaverse
The advent of the Metaverse concept has expedited the evolution of haptic, tactile internet, and multimedia applications with their VR/AR/XR services. Fully immersive sensing is likely to define the next generation of wireless networks as a key to realizing the vision of the Metaverse. The potential economic impact of the Metaverse is significant, with the total market projected to reach between US$8-13 trillion by 2030. Furthermore, Gartner predicts that 25% of people will spend at least one hour daily on the Metaverse platform for personal and professional purposes.
The acceleration of the Metaverse paradigm is fueled by the emergence of the digital twin (DT) technology. In an article published in IEEE Communications Magazine, researchers articulate different types of media they envision communicating between the cyber and physical twins in the Metaverse. In particular, the article explores the advantages grasped by exploiting each kind, pointing out critical challenges pertinent to 3D data processing, coding, transporting, and rendering. While numerous papers have discussed the Metaverse from various perspectives, this article is the first to explore the immersive media within the context of wireless networks.
Immersive Media Streaming
The Metaverse can be characterized by three main properties: immersion, interaction, and persistence. The increasing availability of virtual and augmented reality devices and advancements in computing resources and high-resolution equipment have paved the way for immersive communication to access the Metaverse.
Immersive communication involves exchanging multimedia data and natural haptic signals with remote devices. The effectiveness of immersive communication depends on the ability of wireless nodes to interact with remote environments and accurately perceive and quantify this interaction using all senses. To attain ultimate immersion, future wireless networks must adhere to several key performance indicators, including low communication latency (sub-millisecond) and high throughput. According to the researchers, it is necessary to reevaluate existing wireless techniques and develop novel communication protocols capable of handling various types of multimedia data to deliver the required level of immersion for a high-fidelity Metaverse.
Immersive media for digital twin: Opportunities, limitations, 6G technologies.
The Metaverse may benefit from a realistic representation of 3D natural scenes in high quality, especially for close-to-real visualization of objects and humans. The researchers provide an overview of visual media modalities developed to enable high-quality streaming of 3D scenes from acquisition to display, emphasizing standardization efforts to ensure the interoperability of devices for immersive services. With the different types of multimedia data and transport protocols, it is essential to ensure that future wireless networks can provide resilient and ultra-low latency multimedia transmission between the cyber and physical realms.
6G Communication for the Metaverse
The goal of realizing an immersive, interoperable, and holistic Metaverse can be accomplished by enabling the massive twinning paradigm. This paradigm involves creating a large number of digital twins, which are virtual representations of physical objects or systems. When linked together, these digital twins create an inclusive, comprehensive digital realm that comprises all object-related details and functionalities of its physical counterpart. The researchers note that using a massive number of digital twins (which form the Metaverse) could enhance the fidelity of this virtual representation, enabling more realistic and immersive monitoring and interactions within the Metaverse. To achieve this, multimedia data must be continuously communicated between the cyber and physical twins to ensure a synchronized, up-to-date, and accurate Metaverse.
The role of 6G becomes essential and pivotal, where reliable and fast communication will be needed to ensure a smooth connection between these twins. Future wireless generations will enable more intelligent services, particularly concerning machines/artificial intelligence (AI) agents’ communications, while coping with the available network resources, including energy, spectrum, and computing resources. In the article, the researchers cover the essential role of goal-oriented, semantic, and goal-oriented semantic communication paradigms in enabling immersive multimedia communications.
Architecture of goal-oriented, semantic, and goal-oriented semantic communication.
Driven by their inherent nature of communicating an abstracted version of wireless messages, goal-oriented and semantic communications’ intertwined advantages can be combined to achieve reliable yet spectrally efficient multimedia communication. Semantic communication plays an important role in enhancing goal-oriented communication’s throughput performance. Explaining this concept further, the researchers outline new communication protocols.
Open Challenges & Future Research Directions
The complete integration of the Metaverse with the real world is imperative for its comprehensive realization. This endeavor, however, is fraught with technical challenges. These challenges span diverse domains, including user ethics and security, interoperability, computational complexity, and constraints related to bandwidth in wireless multimedia communication. To address these challenges effectively, the researchers explore opportunities, leveraging strategies such as standardization, the integration of AI in the Metaverse, cloud, and mobile edge computing, as well as advancements in network communication and tactile internet.
Main challenges and opportunities for the development of the Metaverse.
The recent advancements in generative AI and large language models (LLMs) show promising potential for reshaping the different types of experiences within the Metaverse. The researchers’ future vision of the Metaverse relies on exploiting a massive number of sensors attached to everything in the physical environment to enable two-way control between the cyber twin and physical twin, opening new horizons for future research directions.
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