Demystifying the Impact of Multi-RAT Ranging for 6G Metaverse Users

The next generation of mobile networks has been designed in a way to accommodate a wide variety of use cases with diverse Quality of Service (QoS) demands. Within the cellular networks of the future, services will be provided in isolated fragments referred to as network slices. Within this ecosystem, an up-and-coming use case is the advent of Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), which is crucial for fulfilling the vision of the Metaverse. To create a believable Metaverse, it's crucial to precisely locate user devices in addition to maintaining stringent latency controls. As we transition from 5G to 6G networks, it is expected that these networks will function at higher frequencies and in more compact environments. This shift poses a challenge for indoor ranging because signals at these frequencies behave differently. In pursuit of this objective, our work seeks to demystify the ranging performance of Metaverse Users (MUs) in heterogeneous cellular environments. Our evaluation approach leverages the established protocols of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), utilizing an integrated network of conventional cellular base stations and Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) routers to facilitate both outdoor and indoor communications. Ultimately the goal of this paper is to show that the proposed hybrid approach effectively enhances indoor ranging by offloading the distance estimation responsibilities from outdoor base stations to indoor access points.