Toward the Development of 6G System Level Simulators: Addressing the Computational Complexity Challenge

The advancement and standardization of the cellular network system require thorough investigation, analysis, and experimentation of novel protocols, architectures, and functionalities. In this regard, computer-aided tools or simulators allow the execution of these requirements with the much-needed controllability, reproducibility, cost efficiency, and convenience. Simulators have been proven beneficial since the dawn of the cellular network era and are likely to be critical for the upcoming 6G development. However, mimicking such a complex network requires developing intricate and, at the same time, practical simulators. One of the major concerns of the existing simulators is the computational complexity of modeling a realistic and complete network. This challenge is anticipated to exacerbate with the advent of 6G considering its scope and peculiarities. In this article, we analyze the computational complexity of incoming 6G simulators and provide solutions to mitigate this issue. The presented novel framework for future simulators aims to transform the traditional way of building network simulators to serve the unprecedented demand of 6G. The presented use case highlights the efficacy of the proposed framework where we show a 100-fold improvement in the run-time performance of the innovative architecture compared to traditional simulators.