Metaverse: Challenges for Extended Reality and Holographic-Type Communication in the Next Decade

The metaverse is an iteration of the Internet with immersive and hyperreal 3D digital virtual worlds. It can recreate the physical world using technologies such as digital twins, avatars, and holograms. Besides creating digital models of physical environments, the metaverse allows the existence of virtual information, objects, human beings, and environments that do not exist in the physical world. The mixture of real and virtual content in the metaverse can significantly improve users’ capabilities for work, entertainment, education, healthcare, and manufacturing [1] . Development of the metaverse includes three major areas: (1) metaverse content/service design, (2) metaverse core and edge network design, and (3) fully connected networks for metaverse devices in the physical world.