The Metaverse: Survey, Trends, Novel Pipeline Ecosystem & Future Directions

The Metaverse offers a second world beyond reality, where boundaries are non-existent, and possibilities are endless through engagement and immersive experiences using the virtual reality (VR) technology. Many disciplines can benefit from the advancement of the Metaverse when accurately developed, including the fields of technology, gaming, education, art, and culture. Nevertheless, developing the Metaverse environment to its full potential is an ambiguous task that needs proper guidance and directions. Existing surveys on the Metaverse focus only on a specific aspect and discipline of the Metaverse and lack a holistic view of the entire process. To this end, a more holistic, multi-disciplinary, in-depth, and academic and industry-oriented review is required to provide a thorough study of the Metaverse development pipeline. To address these issues, we present in this survey a novel multi-layered pipeline ecosystem composed of (1) the Metaverse computing, networking, communications and hardware infrastructure, (2) environment digitization, and (3) user interactions. For every layer, we discuss the components that detail the steps of its development. Also, for each of these components, we examine the impact of a set of enabling technologies and empowering domains (e.g., Artificial Intelligence, Security & Privacy, Blockchain, Business, Ethics, and Social) on its advancement. In addition, we explain the importance of these technologies to support decentralization, interoperability, user experiences, interactions, and monetization. Our presented study highlights the existing challenges for each component, followed by research directions and potential solutions. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is the most comprehensive and allows users, scholars, and entrepreneurs to get an in-depth understanding of the Metaverse ecosystem to find their opportunities and potentials for contribution

Estimation of Aggregate Effective Bandwidth for Traffic Admission in ATM Networks

A framework for adaptive bandwidth management in ATM based networks is presented. The central concept of this approach is an adaptive estimation of the aggregate effective bandwidth required by connections carried on each link of the network. To achieve reliable results the estimation process takes into account both the trafic source declarations and the connection superposition process measurements on the network P inks. This is done in an o timization framework provided by estimation theory. In the paper we concentrate on evaluation of a bandwidth reserved for possible estimation error. For this purpose we use the error covariance matrix from a linear two state Kalman filter applied for the system state estimation. The bandwidth reserved for the estimation error provides that the source parame-ter declarations can be more relaxed and that the source policing can be less stringent

Link protection within existing backbone network

to be adde

Simultaneous temperature sensing using distributed cascading fiber Bragg grating-based single-ended Brillouin optical time-domain analyzer

International audienceWe report a novel method of simultaneous distributed temperature sensing in optical fibers. The method is based on the cascading fiber Bragg grating (FBG) single-ended Brillouin optical time-domain analyzer (BOTDA). This proposal applies the technology of cascading FBGs to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the single-ended BOTDA. Experimental results show achievement of a 50 km sensing range with 3 °C temperature resolution and 5 m spatial resolution