Elastic Digital Twin Network Modeling fulfilling Twining Dynamic in Network Life Cycle

Digital Twin (DT) is expected to boost efficiency and save cost, for manuscription, system optimization, maintenance, etc. DT realizes this via experimenting candidate solutions in a replica of physical equipment and environment. In the context of telecommunication, Digital Twin Network (DTN) depicts the replica of physical telecommunication network. However, there are three challenges being debated most for DTN. The first is the differentiated requirements during stages in Network Life Cycle (NLC), and these requirements drive that a single DTN cannot fit in the stages in NLC. The second is the decision delay from DTN. This delay makes current DTN hard to be utilized. The third is the cost on full functional copying physical telecommunication infrastructure and management system. Against all the three challenges above, the Elastic Digital Twin Network Modeling (EDiTNetMdl) is proposed in this paper. EdiTNetMdl treats DTN modeling in hierarchy and levels of abstraction. Class and inheritance are designed for representing telecommunication Network Elements (NE) in hierarchy. NE functions and connections are modeled as methods in Classes, with inheritance hierarchy. Full data acquisition is fulfilled in bottom NE instances, well abstract metadata and function description is provided to high level NE and connections. The reduced processing time of EdiTNetMdl supports more flexibility in network decision making with prediction.

I. Introduction

Digital Twin (DT) is expected to save manuscription cost, shorten research and development (R&D) cycle, and reduce optimization and maintenance complexity. Digital Twin Network (DTN) indicates the DT of telecommunication network. ITU-T Y.3090 specified DTN definition as "Digital twin network is a virtual representation of the physical network. It is useful for analyzing, diagnosing, simulating and controlling the physical network based on data, model and interface, so as to achieve the real-time interactive mapping between physical network and virtual twin network." [1]. DTN is hoped to assist Network Life Cycle (NLC) all stages including planning, implementing, maintaining, optimizing, and operating.