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Tactile Internet and its Applications in 5G Era: A Comprehensive Review

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  • Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology (Deemed University), Patiala (Punjab), India
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Abstract and Figures

Over the last few years, communication latency has been a major hurdle for most of the applications deployed in different network domains. During this era, a number of communication protocols and standards were developed and used by the community. However, still the problem of latency persists keeping in view of the Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) for different applications. To mitigate the aforementioned issues, in this paper, we present an in-depth survey of state-of-the art proposals having Tactile Internet as a backbone for delay mitigation using 5G networks for future ultra reliable low latency applications such as-Healthcare 4.0, Industry 4.0, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality and smart Education. From the existing proposals, it has been observed that Tactile Internet can provide interactions between virtual objects to givea feel of real environment with maximum latency of 1ms. Also, this paper highlights the key differences between the Tactile Internet and Internet of Things in context with 5G revolution. Then, open issues and challenges of Tactile Internet for smart applications are analyzed. Finally, a comparison of existing proposals with respect to various parameters is presented which allows the end users to select one of the proposals in comparison to its merits over the others.
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Received: 28 February 2019 Revised: 1 April 2019 Accepted: 7 April 2019
DOI: 10.1002/dac.3981
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Tactile internet and its applications in 5G era: A
comprehensive review
Rajesh Gupta1Sudeep Tanwar1Sudhanshu Tyagi2Neeraj Kumar3
1Department of Computer Science and
Engineering, Institute of Technology,
Nirma University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat,
India
2Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering, Thapar
Institute of Engineering and Technology,
Deemed University, Patiala, Punjab, India
3Department of Computer Science and
Engineering, Thapar Institute of
Engineering and Technology, Deemed
University, Patiala, Punjab, India
Correspondence
Sudeep Tanwar, Department of Computer
Science and Engineering, Institute of
Technology, Nirma University,
Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
Email: sudeep.tanwar@nirmauni.ac.in
Summary
Over the last few years, communication latency has been a major hurdle for
most of the applications deployed in different network domains. During this
era, a number of communication protocols and standards were developed and
used by the community. However, still, the problem of latency persists keep-
ing in view of the quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) for
different applications. To mitigate the aforementioned issues, in this paper, we
present an in-depth survey of state-of-the art proposals having tactile internet
as a backbone for delay mitigation using 5G networks for future ultra-reliable
low-latency applications such as Healthcare 4.0, Industry 4.0, virtual reality and
augmented reality, and smart education. From the existing proposals, it has been
observed that tactile internet can provide interactions between virtual objects to
give a feel of real environment with maximum latency of 1 millisecond. Also,
this paper highlights the key differences between the tactile internet and Inter-
net of Things in context with 5G revolution. Then open issues and challenges
of tactile internet for smart applications are analyzed. Finally, a comparison of
existing proposals with respect to various parameters is presented, which allows
the end users to select one of the proposals in comparison with its merits over
the others.
KEYWORDS
Healthcare 4.0, Industry 4.0, IoT, latency, reliability, tactile internet, 5G
1INTRODUCTION
Mobile communication allows users to exchange data using smart devices ubiquitously using the mobile internet (MI).
MI has millions of connected smart devices irrespective of their locations. It has revolutionized the different segments of
industries such as health care, logistics, education, gaming, and transportation for maintaining quality of service (QoS)
and quality of experience (QoE) for different applications. Moreover, it provides a device-to-device (D2D) communication,
ie, ubiquitous communication for data sharing and communication between devices. This D2D communication coined
the new term, the Internet of Things (IoT),1which provides the low power devices or equipments to perform specific tasks
in the environment where they are deployed. IoT is being used in various smart city applications such as smart lighten-
ing, smart parking, waste management, traffic congestion, and forest fire detection. In D2D communication, the mobile
devices can share prime or critical information in which a delay of even millisecond can harm the persons life (for example,
the information sharing during robotic telesurgery). Existing cellular systems infrastructure is not suitable for such sen-
sitive data sharing because of low data rates and long delay (greater than 20 ms). However, for D2D communications,
Int J Commun Syst. 2019;32:e3981. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/dac © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1of49
https://doi.org/10.1002/dac.3981
... Popular belief suggests that the tactile internet is an environment in which machines overpower humans, but in reality machines only serve as strong and capable complementary devices. As machines become more equipped, the human input (teaching/learning) should be developed as well (Gupta et al., 2019). This cluster included 57 members and had a structural consistency of 0.909. ...
... Its top terms were the industrial internet, the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain management, the manufacturing industry, smart manufacturing, and intelligent manufacturing. The most cited article in this cluster was published by Gupta et al. (2019). They stated that over the past years delays in communication hindered most practical plans in different areas, and that despite advanced communication standards, the problem of delay in quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QOE) persisted. ...
... In this case, reliability means the availability of communication services, which should amount to almost 100%, security and privacy by designing new mechanisms and algorithms. Proper identification of authorized users in fully connected applications, as well as efficient management of tactile data, such as touch sensation along with audio and visual data, are considered significant attributes and challenges [71,72]. Figure 7 depicts the corresponding technical requirements. ...
... However, there are important differences in the perception of human interaction. Overall, TI technology embodies an anthropocentric model that increases the range of human capabilities, involved help of modern and automated devices [71]. ...
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... As mentioned above, the shift has led to the emergence of in-store pickup services as a significant aspect of the modern retail environment. Even though picking up online orders in-store is unquestionably convenient, a recurring issue has hampered its effectiveness: long wait times and big lines, especially at large retailers like Apple and Walmart [2]. To address a critical need in the retail industry, this study will investigate how to include intelligent automation in the in-store pickup procedure. ...
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... The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 further amplified these issues, casting a global shadow. Pandemic-related information garnered significant attention, and due to physical restrictions, public opinion shifted from traditional bullying to cyberbullying (Gupta et al., 2019). These instances not only inflicted physical and psychological harm on the victims (Cui, 2021) but also exacerbated the prevalence of cyberbullying, hindering the development of a harmonious social atmosphere (Dwivedi & Sharma, 2023). ...
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