Network Digital Twin for 6G and Beyond: An End-to-End View Across Multi-Domain Network Ecosystems
2025/06/02 by Dinh-Hieu Tran, Nazar Waheed, Tran, Dinh-Hieu +27 · 2 citations
Engineering · #Digital Transformation in Industry #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI) #Signal Processing (eess.SP) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.01609
openalex publication_date 2025/06/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract
With the rapid development of technology, the number of smart mobile users is increasing, accompanied by growing demands from applications such as virtual/augmented reality (VR/XR), remote surgery, autonomous vehicles, and real-time holographic communications, all of which require high transmission rates and ultra-low latency in 6G and beyond networks (6G+). This poses enormous challenges in efficiently deploying large-scale networks, including network design, planning, troubleshooting, optimization, and maintenance, without affecting the user experience. Network Digital Twin (NDT) has emerged as a potential solution, enabling the creation of a virtual model that reflects the actual network, supporting the simulation of various network designs, applying diverse operating policies, and reproducing complex fault scenarios under real-world conditions. This motivate us for this study, where we provide a comprehensive survey of NDT in the context of 6G+, covering areas such as radio access networks (RAN), transport networks, 5G core networks and beyond (5GCORE+), cloud/edge computing, applications (blockchain, health system, manufacturing, security, and vehicular networks), non-terrestrial networks (NTNs), and quantum networks, from both academic and industrial perspectives. In particular, we are the first to provide an in-depth guide and usage of RAN and 5GCORE+ for NDT. Then, we provide an extensive review of foundation technologies such as transport networks, cloud/edge computing, applications, NTNs, and quantum networks in NDT. Finally, we discuss the key challenges, open issues, and future research directions for NDT in the context of 6G+.
Citations
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