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Tsinghua Science and Technology 2024, 29(3): 795-805 https://doi.org/10.26599/TST.2023.9010052
Open Access | Issue | Published: 04 December 2023

Edge-Enabled Metaverse: The Convergence of Metaverseand Mobile Edge Computing

Show Author's Information Nyothiri Aung1,N,  Sahraoui Dhelim1,†,  Liming Chen2,  Huansheng Ning3( ),  Luigi Atzori4,  Tahar Kechadi5
Information Engineering College, Xinjiang Institute of Engineering, Urumqi 830023, China, and also with School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, D04 V1W8, Ireland
School of Computing, Ulster University, Belfast, BT15 1ED, UK
School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, Sardinia 09124, Italy
School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, D04 V1W8, Ireland

Keywords:
edge computing, fog computing, Blockchain, task offloading, industrial Metaverse, virtual environment
Cite this article:
Aung N, Dhelim S, Chen L, et al. Edge-Enabled Metaverse: The Convergence of Metaverseand Mobile Edge Computing. Tsinghua Science and Technology, 2024, 29(3): 795-805. https://doi.org/10.26599/TST.2023.9010052
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Abstract Full text About this article

Metaverse is a virtual environment where users are represented by their avatars to navigate a virtual world having strong links with its physical counterpart. The state-of-the-art Metaverse architectures rely on a cloud-based approach for avatar physics emulation and graphics rendering computation. The current centralized architecture of such systems is unfavorable as it suffers from several drawbacks caused by the long latency of cloud access, such as low-quality visualization. To this end, we propose a Fog-Edge hybrid computing architecture for Metaverse applications that leverage an edge-enabled distributed computing paradigm. Metaverse applications leverage edge devices’ computing power to perform the required computations for heavy tasks, such as collision detection in the virtual universe and high-computational 3D physics in virtual simulations. The computational costs of a Metaverse entity, such as collision detection or physics emulation, are performed at the device of the associated physical entity. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture, we simulate a distributed social Metaverse application. The simulation results show that the proposed architecture can reduce the latency by 50% when compared with cloud-based Metaverse applications.


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About this article

Edge-Enabled Metaverse: The Convergence of Metaverseand Mobile Edge Computing

Show Author's information Nyothiri Aung1,N, Sahraoui Dhelim1,†, Liming Chen2, Huansheng Ning3( ), Luigi Atzori4, Tahar Kechadi5
Information Engineering College, Xinjiang Institute of Engineering, Urumqi 830023, China, and also with School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, D04 V1W8, Ireland
School of Computing, Ulster University, Belfast, BT15 1ED, UK
School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, Sardinia 09124, Italy
School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, D04 V1W8, Ireland

Abstract

Metaverse is a virtual environment where users are represented by their avatars to navigate a virtual world having strong links with its physical counterpart. The state-of-the-art Metaverse architectures rely on a cloud-based approach for avatar physics emulation and graphics rendering computation. The current centralized architecture of such systems is unfavorable as it suffers from several drawbacks caused by the long latency of cloud access, such as low-quality visualization. To this end, we propose a Fog-Edge hybrid computing architecture for Metaverse applications that leverage an edge-enabled distributed computing paradigm. Metaverse applications leverage edge devices’ computing power to perform the required computations for heavy tasks, such as collision detection in the virtual universe and high-computational 3D physics in virtual simulations. The computational costs of a Metaverse entity, such as collision detection or physics emulation, are performed at the device of the associated physical entity. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture, we simulate a distributed social Metaverse application. The simulation results show that the proposed architecture can reduce the latency by 50% when compared with cloud-based Metaverse applications.

Keywords: edge computing, fog computing, Blockchain, task offloading, industrial Metaverse, virtual environment

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Received: 05 February 2023
Revised: 23 May 2023
Accepted: 26 May 2023
Published: 04 December 2023
Issue date: June 2024

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© The Author(s) 2024.

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