A Comprehensive Review of Metaverse: Network Architectures, Emerging Technologies, and Future Research Opportunities

Abstract

Metaverse is a new upcoming digital world that most of users are looking for. The Metaverse allows people to step into virtual spaces where they can fully engage with any digital world that supports the technology, no matter where they are physically located. This innovative platform makes it possible to connect with others around the globe at any time, opening new opportunities for communication and collaboration without the limitations of geographic boundaries. Metaverse technology can be helpful in many fields including education, medicine, agriculture, engineering and many more. Metaverse adoption remains limited due to its complexity. Many are worried about the challenges in Metaverse such as latency, cybercrime issues, high cost, and many more which hinders many organisations and institutes from trying Metaverse. Hence, to understand the concept and application of Metaverse in details, this study will be very helpful for researchers, organisations and industries. This study reviews some of existing Metaverse Network Architectures with the collaborations of edge computing, clouds, and other technologies supporting the Metaverse. It also discusses about the challenges faced when implementing Metaverse such as latency issues, the infrastructure of Cloud, bandwidth, throughput, scalability security and privacy issues in Metaverse. This study not only discusses about the challenges but also the improvements and options available to overcome the challenges. The importance of emerging technology for the development of Metaverse also been discussed in detail besides discussion on research gaps and opportunities for future studies.