A Full Dive into Realizing the Edge-enabled Metaverse: Visions, Enabling Technologies, and Challenges
The paper provides a comprehensive survey on the edge-enabled Metaverse, an evolving vision regarded as the successor to the mobile Internet. It elaborates on the architecture, enabling technologies, and challenges of fully realizing a seamless, immersive, and interoperable Metaverse accessible at scale. This paper explores communication and networking, computation, and blockchain as critical infrastructures necessary to support Metaverse functionalities.
From a communication and networking perspective, the paper emphasizes addressing the stringent requirements associated with AR/VR, the tactile Internet, and holographic communications, which form the core of the Metaverse's immersive experience. Challenges such as the provision of high data rate, low latency, and reliable connections through advanced multiple-access systems are examined. The authors highlight that realizing the Metaverse necessitates a shift towards semantic and goal-aware communication paradigms, reducing the network load by transmitting only the information necessary for task completion. Furthermore, ensuring seamless multi-sensory communication and efficient resource allocation in such complex systems remains an essential prospect for the community.
In terms of computation, the paper discusses the necessity of cloud-edge-end collaborative frameworks to support computation-intensive applications on resource-constrained devices. The Metaverse demands adaptive computation strategies for offloading tasks and intelligent rendering to optimize processing efficiency. Emphasizing the need for scalable AI within the Metaverse, the paper reviews techniques for model compression and acceleration to support various AI-driven tasks necessary for avatar cognition, content personalization, and augmented intelligence. Additionally, approaches to strengthen privacy and security in these environments through federated learning and trusted execution environments are explored.
The survey also articulates the critical role of blockchain technology in supporting decentralized, secure, and transparent operations within the Metaverse. It distinguishes the blockchain's potential in managing user-generated content, enabling fair economic ecosystems, and facilitating reliable edge resource management. Issues such as the necessity for scalable and interoperable blockchain configurations to support massive concurrent user interactions and transactions are also assessed. The paper discusses how blockchain and decentralized technologies can underpin privacy protection, secure data storage, and inter-chain operability, ensuring consistent user experience across varied virtual worlds.
Overall, the paper asserts that the practical realization of an edge-enabled Metaverse intricately depends on synergizing advancements across these technological pillars. The authors articulate future research directions focused on immersive user experience, sustainable resource management, and extensive edge intelligence to guide the industry in overcoming current hurdles. This resourceful exposition offers pivotal insights into addressing the pivotal challenges of bringing the full vision of the Metaverse to fruition, establishing a critical foundation for ongoing and future research endeavors in this rapidly evolving field.