ABSTRACT
The term metaverse, owing its name to Greek words, “meta” and “verse” meaning beyond world, is going to change the existing world in many ways. Metaverse enables users to experience a virtual world offering immersed interactive environment free from physical limitations, where avatars can interact, collaborate, and engage in various activities, related to work, recreational activities, and building relationships. Nevertheless, there are significant challenges that hinder the widespread implementation of the metaverse, including the processing and analysing of petabytes of data, complex computations, security and privacy concerns, comprehensive sensing, network scalability, high costs, and latency issues. Additionally, the metaverse requires a reliable and high-speed wireless network connectivity to ensure a high-quality user experience, which is not currently provided by the existing communication standards. Despite these challenges, there is a lack of research on the issues and challenges that arise in the implementation of the metaverse. This chapter focuses on addressing issues related to network and security, minimising latency, improving reliability, and maximising throughput in wireless sensor networks by utilising multifarious technologies like 5G and edge computing in Internet of Things. Both 5G and edge computing are critical components of creating immersive 3D video experiences in metaverse. This chapter gives a comprehensive literature review of the significant technical challenges that arise during the implementation of the metaverse and examines the convergence and sustainability of technologies that can help overcome these challenges. The potential of technologies like 5G and edge computing on the metaverse is explored in detail, and this chapter presents various approaches that have been taken thus far to address network and latency issues. After a thorough investigation, a detailed metaverse architecture consisting of different layers is proposed.
