Tactile IoT and 5G & beyond schemes as key enabling technologies for the future metaverse

Abstract

The Tactile Internet (TI) is a recently emerging field that has been developing and evolving to date, since its communications parallel the sense of human touch. Lately, the revolutionized concept, Metaverse, draws attention due to the evolved immersive experience of human perception of the surrounding environment. This technology supports the ultimate union between the physical and virtual world, facilitated by 5G and beyond communication networks. Users are capable of interacting with machines and devices in real-time, remotely, resembling the actions of their physical counterparts. The particular approaches are still in their infancy and expected to produce spectacular results in various sectors such as industry, healthcare, autonomous vehicles, etc. This immersion is further assisted by the Internet of Things, while expecting full wireless support by 5G networks. In this article, a systematic review studies the domains of TI, 5G and beyond networks, as well as their relations with the Metaverse, rendering the respective schemes Key Enabling Technologies for the future Metaverse. A thorough analysis is conducted on the underpinning schemes, relative architectures, structures, and operation modes. In addition, a comprehensive list is presented, focusing on related application fields and their benefits, considering the strengths and weaknesses of the involved technologies. Finally, challenges and issues arising are discussed, both from the perspective of technical requirements and the psychosomatic aspect of human experience.

A review of research on RF MEMS for metaverse interactions

“…At the Mobile World Congress 2022, the metaverse made its debut on the congress hot list and became the focus of attention, which was widely noticed and studied. The metaverse itself is not a new technology, but mobile communication technology [1] (5G [2], 6G [3]), artificial intelligence [4] (computer vision [5], decision-making systems, etc [6]), and immersive technology [7,8] (virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR)), cloud computing [9], blockchain [10], and Internet of Things (IoT) human-computer interaction [11] and other existing new generations of information technology comprehensive integration has become a new stage of information technology development, the development of existing technology to a certain stage after the formation of new organizational aggregation methods derived from the new Internet industry. In the prospect of a metaverse-oriented range of applications, the synergistic optimization of hardware solutions must not be neglected, and in hardware systems, there is currently no strong incentive to decentralize metaverse high-level requirements into more detailed sub-system and component-level specifications for comprehensive quantitative benchmarking.…”

Beyond Flight: Enhancing the Internet of Drones with Blockchain Technologies

“…Since drones collect real-world data, 5G's low latency and high bandwidth can facilitate this procedure of utilizing external data sources when the related data are inserted into a blockchain, with smart contracts enhancing the capabilities of blockchain-based oracles. This is crucial for real-time communication and decision-making in drone operations, while during the data processing in blockchain, low latency in the 5G network provides faster transaction confirmation, propagation, and validation, leading to faster confirmation times [194,195].…”

“…Table 5 summarizes the studied references related to the underpinning technologies of the blockchain-IoD union. The Internet of Things (IoT) within blockchain and the IoD [190][191][192][193] Communication technologies [192,[194][195][196][197][198] 5G networks [197,[199][200][201] 6G networks…”