Enabling Wearables towards the Metaverse: Trade-Offs Involving Blockage and Heat
Journal article, 2026
Immersive and extended reality (XR) represents one of the most exciting applications of beyond-5G networks, paving the way towards the metaverse. Wearable devices (wearables for short) are the core component of XR and, being small and lightweight, face several unique challenges. Most notably, they must handle large amounts of complex computations despite their limited processing power, which can lead to device overheating. This issue becomes more pronounced when heavy computational tasks cannot be offloaded to the edge due to connectivity issues like blockage. In this work, we aim at identifying the best approach for delivering XR services, considering that both local and edge-based XR processing can be combined to best cope with challenging operational conditions, most importantly, channel blockage and device overheating. Through numerical experiments based on real-world wearables, we demonstrate that balancing the trade-offs between heat management and blockage mitigation leads to the best performance and quality of experience for XR applications.
Author
Olga Chukhno
Università degli Studi di Reggio Calabria
Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni (CNIT)
Francesco Malandrino
Consiglo Nazionale Delle Richerche
Alessandro Catania
University of Pisa
Antonella Molinaro
Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni (CNIT)
Università degli Studi di Reggio Calabria
Carla Fabiana Chiasserini
Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer and Network Systems
University of Gothenburg
Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni (CNIT)
Polytechnic University of Turin
IEEE Communications Magazine
0163-6804 (ISSN) 15581896 (eISSN)
Vol. 64 1 87-92Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)
Communication Systems
Computer Sciences
Telecommunications
Signal Processing
DOI
10.1109/MCOM.001.2400591