Call for Articles

With the advent of multimedia content, sensing and imaging technologies, compute capabilities, and networking and Cloud solutions, the XReality (XR) technologies and solutions are in continuous progress and evolution. XR is used as an umbrella term to describe Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR). Recent advances in XR and immersive technologies pave the way to the paradigm of metaverse. The metaverse is considered the next evolution of the Internet and IoT, in which users can traverse a virtual world, that mimics aspects of the physical world, to provide varying immersive experiences. In this context, immersive experience refers to the development of a seamless and wirelessly connected extended reality between virtual and real worlds to the users. Indeed, the metaverse has received much attention across several industry segments. Recent technologies in human–computer interaction, IoT, Cloud and Edge Computing, Blockchain, NFT, and high-performance computing infrastructures have enabled many new application scenarios for the XR and metaverse. For instance, IoT is helping to map data from real life, in realtime, into a digital reality. Thus, IoT’s main role will be to bring the outside world into the digital realm. In addition, multi-Access networking and the envisioned future of 6G technologies along with artificial intelligence could support such massive and immersive virtual environments by connecting billions of users and create a shared world where virtual and reality merge. However, limited by resources, computing power, and sensory devices, Metaverse is still far from realizing its full vision of immersion, materialization, and interoperability. In addition, achieving these objectives requires synergistic techniques from different fields, including deep learning, optimization, game theory, wireless communications, and graph/network theory. There is also a need for big synergy between the device, the network infrastructure and the applications and across multiple players to enable end-to-end solutions.

This Special Issue calls for research contributions on B5G/6G networking for metaverse from many perspectives, including algorithm design and analysis, fundamental theories, and practical considerations. We solicit original high-quality contributions on topics including, but not limited to (contributions from industry are highly encouraged):

• IoT for XR and metaverse.
• Wireless Communication, networking, and edge computing for metaverse.
• AI for Metaverse scenarios and services.
• IoT-enabled extended reality for metaverse.
• Emerging metaverse applications and services.
• Applications standard interfaces and APIs between the device, the network and edge infrastructure, and the Cloud to seamlessly build end-to-end solutions
• Recent computer vision techniques for metaverse.
• Resource allocation techniques for metaverse.
• Optimization problems for wireless extended reality.
• Game theory for wireless extended reality.
• Collaborative learning for efficient metaverse scenarios.
• Edge-enabled AI for metaverse.
• AI-enabled IoT for metaverse applications
• New architecture and protocols for efficient deployment of metaverse applications.
• Security, privacy, and trust in the context of the metaverse.

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the IEEE Internet of Things Magazine standard format as indicated in the Information for Authors section of the Article Submission Guidelines. All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through the magazine’s Manuscript Central site. Select “March 2023 / Multi-Access Networking for Extended Reality and Metaverse” from the drop-down menu of Topic/Series titles.

Important Dates

Paper Submission Deadline: 15 December 2022 (Extended Deadline)
Feedback to Authors: 30 December 2022
Revision Submission Deadline: 31 December 2022
Notification of Final Decision: 15 January 2023
Issue of Publication: March 2023

Guest Editors

Bouziane Brik (Lead Guest Editor)
Bourgogne university, France

Hassnaa Moustafa (Secondary Corresponding Guest Editor)
Intel Corporation, USA

Yan Zhang
University of Oslo, Norway

Abderrahmane Lakas
United Arab Emirates University, UAE

Sriram Subramanian
Meta, USA