From Simulators to Digital Twins for Enabling Emerging Cellular Networks: A Tutorial and Survey

TL;DR

An extensive review of the currently available Digital System Models for 5G and beyond (5G&B) networks is presented and 5G-specific evaluation metrics that capture three key facets of a network simulator are devised, namely realism, completeness, and computational efficiency are devised.

Abstract

Simulators are indispensable parts of the research and development necessary to advance countless industries, including cellular networks. With simulators, the evaluation, analysis, testing, and experimentation of novel designs and algorithms can be executed in a more cost-effective and convenient manner without the risk of real network service disruption. Additionally, recent trends indicate that the advancement of these Digital System Models (DSM), such as system-level simulators, will hold a pivotal role in advancing cellular networks by facilitating the development of digital twins. Given this growing significance, in this survey and tutorial paper, we present an extensive review of the currently available DSMs for 5G and beyond (5G&B) networks. Specifically, we begin with a tutorial on the fundamental concepts of 5G&B network simulations, followed by an identification of the essential design requirements needed to model the key features of these networks. We also devised a taxonomy of different types of 5G&B network simulators. In contrast to existing simulator surveys, which mostly leverage traditional metrics applicable to legacy networks, we devise and use 5G-specific evaluation metrics that capture three key facets of a network simulator, namely realism, completeness, and computational efficiency. We evaluate each simulator according to the devised metrics to generate an applicability matrix that maps different 5G&B simulators vis-a-vis the different research themes they can potentially enable. We also present the current challenges in developing 5G&B simulators while laying out several potential solutions to address the issues. Finally, we discuss the future challenges related to simulator design provisions that will arise with the emergence of 6G networks.

Figures (13)

• Figure 1: Spider web diagram of different cellular network evaluation tools using a penta-prong metrics including practicality of the results, utility to industry, utility to academic R&D, risk to the live network, and required resources.
• Figure 2: Digital system model utilized as digital twin kernel.
• Figure 3: Summary of available literature on simulator comparison in wireless networks. Inside the circles are the different domains of wireless networks. Inside the connected ellipses are the survey papers available in the literature. The outline of these ellipses represents the year of publication. The figures inside the square represent the number of simulators included in each survey paper.
• Figure 4: List of the simulators evaluated and comparison metrics used in relevant literature.
• Figure 5: Structure of the paper.