Digital Twin Enabled Intelligent Network Orchestration for 6G: A Dual-Layered Approach

Meeting diverse service requirements concurrently in the future 6th-generation (6G) networks is becoming extremely challenging due to the dramatically increased network and service complexities. Overcoming this challenge relies on accurate and timely understanding of network dynamics and distributed service requirements. However, the excessive delay and resource consumption associated with network-wide information gathering and centralized processing will inevitably deteriorate the 6G network operation effectiveness. To address this challenge, a dual-layered digital twin paradigm is proposed in this paper to enable intelligent network orchestration for fast real-time optimization of 6G networks. Rapid identification of problematic network situations and the corresponding fast decision-making in tackling the related issues are successively achieved by the two layers of the proposed digital twin. The new dual-layered digital twin is further adopted for traffic engineering in 6G networks with maximized quality of service provisioning. Simulation results demonstrate that the dual-layered digital twin paradigm can intelligently achieve accurate and situation-aware digital twin construction and network optimization with enhanced efficiency.