SCOPE AND TOPICS OF THE WORKSHOP

Metaverse is an interconnected platform enabling users to seamlessly interact with theoretically unlimited virtual worlds, thus facilitating immersive, engaging, and real-time experiences that amalgamate reality and virtuality realms. The immersive experience in Metaverse is revolutionizing various industries including remote healthcare, gaming or entertainment, virtual work and learning spaces, virtual businesses, and the Internet of skills. 

The realization of the Metaverse is facilitated by the convergence of various technologies, including image processing and computer vision to create the virtual environment inside the Metaverse. On the other hand, the network protocols, edge computing techniques, and security protocols enable secure real-time immersive experiences using secure dedicated network paths and proximate computations from outside. These networking, computing and security techniques aim to deliver a secure, seamless, and real-time experience to geographically distributed users to interact with each other to the extent they are co-located. However, traditional networking solutions, edge computing techniques and security protocols cannot deliver a secure real-time experience in Metaverse owing to considerable latency incurred by the inefficient network and security protocols design and insignificant edge computing capabilities. These issues thus cause a lag in rendering virtual objects on the intended position, especially in multi-person collaborative Metaverse applications. These challenges will need to be addressed before the metaverse can properly realize its goals of immersive realism, hyper spatiotemporality, sustainability, and heterogeneity. 

This workshop aims at presenting and showcasing the latest advances in 1) Networking: Improve interoperability by integrating New-IP/FVCN, ICN, and Zero-touch protocols. Use semantic communication for data interpretation and machine learning for adaptive network management, 2) Computing: Develop an integrated edge and fog computing architecture to reduce latency and enhance real-time responses. Implement compute-reuse mechanisms for efficient processing, and 3) Security: Utilize blockchain technology to enhance security and transparency in the Metaverse. Develop protocols for user data protection and address potential threats proactively. In the attempt to address networking, computing, and security issues that contemporary, as well as futuristic Metaverse applications may confront, the research contributions are welcome but not limited to following:

TOPICS

Metaverse-based Networking

• Networking protocols for Metaverse

• Latency reduction techniques for Metaverse application 

• Zero-touch networks for the Metaverse 

• Collaborative content-sharing network protocols for Metaverse 

• Metaverse-based customized network protocol design. 

• Information-centric Metaverse 

• New IP / future vertical communication networks for Metaverse 

• Semantic Communications for the Metaverse 

• Intelligent networking and security for Metaverse 

• AI for Metaverse-based Networking

Metaverse-based Computing

• Cloud  edge and fog computing for the Metaverse

• Protocol design for distributed edge and fog computing for Metaverse 

• Distributed resource allocation in Metaverse 

• Metaverse architectural design

• Metaverse  development

• Metaverse optimization analysis

• Metaverse system interoperability and standardization 

• Quantum computing for the metaverse

• Microservices architectural requirements & design implementation for Metaverse 

• Efficient computing protocols for Metaverse

• AI for Metaverse-based Computing

Metaverse-based Security

• Blockchain for Metaverse 

• Access management in the Metaverse

• Authentication protocols for Metaverse

• Cybersecurity threats in Metaverse

• Metaverse content privacy

• Fraud prevention schemes for the Metaverse

• Trust Schemas Metaverse

• Digital asset security in the Metaverse

• AI-driven security for Metaverse

• Secure protocol design for Metaverse

SPECIAL ISSUE in IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society

Selected high-quality relevant papers from the workshop will be invited to IEEE OJ-COMS Journal [Q1/IF:7.9] special issue titled Challenges and Opportunities in Metaverse-based Communication and Networking.

Important Dates

Workshop Paper Submission Deadline: 20 January 2024  (Extended (Firm&Final): February, 04, 2024)

Paper Acceptance Notification: 6 March 2024

Camera Ready: 15 March 2024 

Registration for Accepted Papers: 15 March 2024