Role of 5G and 6G Technologies in Metaverse, Quality of Service Challenges and Future Research Directions

The popularity of Metaverse technology has grown in recent years due to its ability to connect real-world and virtual-world objects to establish a social ecology paradigm, in which various applications collaborate towards a common objective, such as the digital transformation of the world. However, this emerging technology faces significant challenges in terms of security, scalability, interoperability, and communication, which can impact Quality of Service (QoS) metrics like latency, throughput, handover with mobility, communication cost, platform integration, and data privacy, etc. The literature contains several survey papers to familiarize readers, students, researchers, and enterprise stakeholders with these challenges. However, we did not find a single comprehensive review paper that discusses how security, scalability, interoperability, and communication affect the QoS metrics in the Metaverse, especially in the context of 5G and 6G technologies. Therefore, our aim is to provide an overview of the latest literature by considering the requirements of Metaverse technology in the era of futuristic communication technologies such as 5G and 6G technologies. Moreover, we identified and analyzed the contributions and limitations of current literature to highlight the key research challenges that require the attention of the research community to ensure their redressal. Furthermore, we acknowledge that this is the first survey paper that provides an overview of the QoS metrics of future 5G and 6G-enabled Metaverse technology under one umbrella.