The Roadmap of Communication and Networking in 6G for the Metaverse

The Metaverse can be regarded as a hypothesized iteration of the Internet, which enables people to work, play, and interact socially in a persist online 3-D virtual environment with an immersive experience, by generating an imaginary environment similar to the real world, including realistic sounds, images, and other sensations. The Metaverse has strict requirements for a fully-immersive experience, large-scale concurrent users, and seamless connectivity, which poses many unprecedented challenges to the sixth generation (6G) wireless system, such as ubiquitous connectivity, ultra-low latency, ultra-high capacity and reliability, and strict security. In addition, to achieve the immersive and hassle-free experience of mass users, the full coverage sensing, seamless computation, reliable caching, and persistent consensus and security should be carefully considered to integrate into the future 6G system. To this end, this article aims to depict the roadmap to the Metaverse in terms of communication and networking in 6G, including illustrating the framework of the Metaverse, revealing the strict requirements and challenges for 6G to realize the Metaverse, and discussing the fundamental technologies to be integrated in 6G to drive the implementation of the Metaverse, including intelligent sensing, digital twin (DT), space-air-ground-sea integrated network (SAGSIN), multi-access edging computing (MEC), blockchain, and the involved security issues.