Performance Analysis of Virtual-Real Synchronization in Digital Twin Network: Trade-Offs Between Timeliness, Distortion, and Sustainability

A great challenge for digital twin network (DTN) is status synchronization between the physical entity and corresponding digital twin, which is referred to as virtual-real synchronization. In this paper, the virtual-real synchronization performance in DTN is comprehensively investigated from the perspective of timeliness, distortion, and sustainability, respectively, where the synchronization timeliness and sustainability are characterized by the age of information and energy consumption, respectively. The closed-form expressions of the synchronization timeliness, distortion and sustainability are derived. Simulation results validate the theoretical analysis and reveal the trade-offs among synchronization timeliness, distortion and sustainability.