Metaverse of Things in 6G Era: An Emerging Fusion of IoT, XR, Edge AI and Blockchain Technologies

An emerging future networks will be driven by the deep integration of the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies. With the enhanced capabilities of the 5G mobile networks, currently we are observing the growing interest to the metaverse and extended reality (XR) applications. Considering the demand for remote engagement solutions, in this chapter we describe the new emerging paradigm called Metaverse of Things (MoT), which aims to synchronize humans, things and digital entities across real and virtual worlds. We have outlined a state-of-the-art of the XR, IoT, edge computing, AI and blockchain, and explained how their combination can enable the MoT development. Finally, we describe the decentralized service management workflow in 6G network considering the synchronized transmission of the multiple data flows, which are transmitted through multiple devices with different quality requirements, but are associated with the single MoT application.