Network Digital Twin in Telecom: Benefits and Use Cases

In today’s networks, performance optimization is more difficult than ever due to the complex ecosystem of 5G, edge computing, cloud services, and IoT. Telecom network managers have to prevent threats while ensuring high availability. Digital twins offer a solution to this with real-time visibility, operational knowledge, and simulation-driven improvements that power telco network transformation.

Digital twins, the sophisticated virtual replicas, can effortlessly integrate with intelligent platforms driven by automation and AIOps, simulating the behavior, performance, and health of physical networks in real time. Digital twins assist network operators in adapting dynamically, minimizing the need for manual intervention and guaranteeing continuous operations through proactive optimization, self-healing capabilities, and predictive insights.

Understanding Digital Twin for Telecommunications Networks

A virtual duplicate of the real telecommunications networks can help professionals with a variety of use cases, including network architecture, lifecycle management, and security. The core architecture that supports this purpose includes:

• Data: To replicate a network environment, digital twins use both historical and current data. A data repository that serves as a single source of truth houses this information.
• Models: A physical network is represented by a model. To build virtual autonomous networks, it gathers information from many sources and examines the surroundings.
• Interfaces: It is used to facilitate communication between applications, physical infrastructure, and the digital twin. These interfaces deliver requests and gather data.
• Mapping: The digital twin and the associated telecommunications networks are identified during the mapping process.

When combined, these components produce a virtual representation that gives network operators important information about the network as a whole.

Role of Digital Twin in Telco Transformation: Use Cases

End-to-end digital twins are the secret to opening a new age of telco network transformation. This approach puts digital twins at the core of every decision, where activities are completed first in the twin environment before executing in the actual system. This helps telecommunications networks with various use cases. Some of them include:

● Optical Networks

Using measurements of physical phenomena such as attenuation, dispersion, and nonlinear effects in optical networks, network digital twins can dynamically improve power and routing topologies.

● 5G and 6G Networks for Communication

Network twins can dynamically improve beamforming parameters, network element topologies, power consumption, and other aspects of mobile networks by utilizing real-world elements like radio frequency power and channel congestion.

During dynamic modifications to existing physical networks, consumers may experience deterioration in the quality of service or unintentionally exceed emission power restrictions. To determine the best combinations, engineers can safely test them on the digital twin.

●  What-if Analysis

Considering the situation of removing a router for repair without understanding the possible consequences is an example of proactive planning and what-if analysis. To determine any bottlenecks, a digital twin helps to evaluate the effect on end-user services and guarantee adequate redundancy. This proactive strategy guarantees smooth service continuity.

How Digital Twin Benefits Network Operators

Digital twins have accelerated the pace of telco network transformation. It provides companies with various benefits, which include:

1. Enhanced Customer Experience and Outage Management

Telecom network operators should prioritize providing excellent customer service, and the Digital Twin enables users to always be aware of their connectivity. Potential reconfigurations and equipment upgrades can be thoroughly tested with a digital twin. The impact of planned outages can be examined in great detail when compared to the connected “actual” network.

2. Accurate Asset Valuation and Investment Insights

Investors and operators like to know the worth of their assets, whether it is for raising new funds or part of a telco network transformation process. Validating valuable network assets is aided by the ability to demonstrate and evaluate important characteristics using real-time network data through a digital twin, which in turn helps to save costs.

3. Improved Network Planning and Future Potential Analysis

A digital twin can be used to precisely gather and illustrate future network potential for telco transformation. The summary of homes traversed and connected serves as one illustration that provides an understanding of assets, revenues, and expenses.

4. Reducing Human Errors Through Controlled Data Access

Security can be jeopardized by inadvertent human error. The sensitive material might be misdirected via email or hard copy, which in turn can cause costly errors. Digital twin prevents this by testing and running the changes in the virtual environment and replicating them to the actual one. When a field engineer wants to replace a cable in a specific location, setting up autonomous networks enables the field engineer to obtain the precise information required to carry out the adjustments at the precise moment the data is required.

Bottom Line

Network digital twins represent a fundamental telco network transformation, changing the way companies approach end-to-end operations. Before any modifications are made, digital twins provide a potent means of simulating real-world situations, forecasting results, and making well-informed decisions.

Operations will be revolutionized by the power of simulation and analysis, which will drive customer experience and service differentiation while reducing operational risk and optimizing costs. Digital twins enable network operators to enhance their workflows, processes, and decision-making, which in turn boosts operational efficiency and speed while also providing higher-quality services.