Digital-Twin-Enabled 6G: Vision, Architectural Trends, and Future Directions

By Latif Ullah Khan, Walid Saad, Dusist Niyato, Zhu Han, Choong Seon Hong. IEEE Communications Magazine, 2021

475 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Internet of Everything (IoE) applications such as haptics, human-computer interaction, and extended reality, using the sixth-generation (6G) of wireless systems have diverse requirements in terms of latency, reliability, data rate, and user-defined performance metrics. Therefore, enabling IoE applications over 6G requires a new framework that can be used to manage, operate, and optimize the 6G wireless system and its underlying IoE services. Such a new framework for 6G can be based on digital twins. Digital twins use a virtual representation of the 6G physical system along with the associated algorithms (e.g., machine learning, optimization), communication technologies (e.g., millimeter-wave and terahertz communication), computing systems (e.g., edge computing and cloud computing), as well as privacy and security-related technologists (e.g., blockchain). First, we present the key design requirements for enabling 6G through the use of a digital twin. Next, the architectural components and trends such as edge-based twins, cloud-based-twins, and edge-cloud-based twins are presented. Furthermore, we provide a comparative description of various twins. Finally, we outline and recommend guidelines for several future research directions.

Subfields: Computer Networks and Communications, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bcd8d42c8a9c17acf3f63f68d5d82d4d9bd5509c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Computer Networks and Communications

1. Walid Saad
2. Ekram Hossain
3. Zhu Han
4. Choong Seon Hong
5. Weihua Zhuang
6. Xuemin Shen
7. Jie Gao
8. Mushu Li

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Xuemin Shen
2. Walid Saad
3. Ekram Hossain
4. Zhu Han
5. Choong Seon Hong
6. Weihua Zhuang
7. Latif Ullah Khan
8. Rui Zhang

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. Zhu Han

Citations in the corpus

• Holistic Network Virtualization and Pervasive Network Intelligence for 6G (2023, methodology): “The concept of digital twin was originally conceived by Michael Grieves for product life-cycle management in industry in 2003 [74], [75].”
• Federated Learning for Internet of Things: Recent Advances, Taxonomy, and Open Challenges (2020, background): “Smart cities can offer several critical applications such as intelligent transportation, smart industries, healthcare, and smart surveillance, among others [2]–[5].”