By Steffen Kuhn, Head of Digital Innovation, Detecon, and Hendrik Grosser, Senior Manager and Expert for Industrial Internet of Things, Detecon
Digital twins can be used for the planning and virtual control of both fixed and mobile networks. Real-time data display the status of various components and improve asset monitoring.
As they are elements of critical infrastructure (CRITIS), telecommunications providers worldwide are faced with the major challenge of being able to operate their fixed and mobile network infrastructure as free of downtime as possible. Moreover, they must also upgrade existing technology continuously. The switch from 4G to 5G or the expansion of fiber optic networks to modern gigabit networks is only one example.
Unfortunately, however, even scenarios such as the following are no longer rare. Perpetrators break into a technical room at night and cut several fiber optic cables, causing outages in telephone and internet services. Or a cellular station fails and cellular traffic must be rerouted through other locations. And even more catastrophic: an entire region is affected by communication infrastructure failures, as was the case during the 2021 flood disaster in the Ahr region of Germany.
Strengthening the Resilience of Communication Networks
In Germany, the Federal Network Agency [Bundesnetzagentur] responded to such incidents in 2022 by publishing a strategy paper defining fields of action and scenarios to further strengthen the resilience of public telecommunications networks. The principle of geo-redundancy, for example, is one of the resilience tools already used by most network operators. Their measures include the maintenance of geo-redundant backup solutions to compensate for failures of central technical sites.
Today, the use of digital twins, a technology that has already established itself in other industries, is coming more and more into play in the telecommunications sector as well. Manufacturing, for example, uses digital twins to virtually map complete production facilities, machines and processes. In consideration of this development, the International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that between 2021 and 2027, the proportion of new physical assets and processes modeled as digital twins will rise from five percent to 60 percent.
Telecommunications network operators are also gradually sharpening their focus on digital twins. They can virtually map their entire network infrastructure and all of its technical components, such as cell towers or networks, simulate processes, utilize the twins for maintenance, or set up alternative paths to reroute data traffic in real time when outages occur. Such virtual images have already been used for the planning and installation of 5G campus networks for some time. They serve to optimize deployment scenarios, hardware components and configurations even before the components have actually been installed, reducing time and effort and cutting investment costs.
Application Concepts for Digital Twins
Over the course of a consulting project for a telecommunications regulatory authority in the Middle East, Detecon simulated the potential application concepts of the digital twin for network operators in multiple steps. Regulatory authorities do more than merely monitor the performance of telecommunications networks. They also specify how providers must make new technologies, innovative services and products available. The government authority wanted to make use of the network digital twin for the analysis of network data from service providers with the aim of improving assessment of their performance and determining what precautions they had initiated to handle emergencies and crises.
A key differentiator between a digital twin and previous modeling tools is that a digital twin can feed live data (captured, for example, by sensors or IoT devices) into the twin, enabling real-time analysis encompassing even remote control and behavioral simulation of the physical object.
There are a number of applications for the use of digital twins available to network operators that, at their core, cover the following possibilities: real-time monitoring, facility control and simulation of processes. For instance, all locations requiring tower and field service management can be mapped in a digital twin. Sensor networks at each location collect data that is important for determining the status of the hardware, including (but not limited to) the detection of people approaching the site, temperatures of components, or operating conditions of important network elements. These data are fed into a site’s digital twin and provide key information to operations and field service management before they even arrive at the site. Experts can also support the on-site field staff from the command center by observing the digital twin.
Status Monitoring in Real Time
Drones are also being used. They scan the condition of the radio towers from the outside and transfer the data to the twin. Using the information, analysts can compare the actual and target statuses of components, and if there are any striking changes, the field service can visit specific locations to make any necessary repairs. The procedure saves time and money because sites must today be inspected at fixed intervals, whether there are actually any anomalies or not.
The digital twin also facilitates the planning, design and cataloging of a network infrastructure. All the network elements requiring replacement when the network is modernized — when switching from 4G to 5G, for example — can be viewed at a glance. This was previously a time-consuming challenge for operators, even though telecommunications providers have long used a variety of tools for network modeling, planning, simulation, deployment and operational support. A digital twin could compile these tool functions into a single operation that provides an accurate network inventory and user data from ongoing operations.
Based on all the data, providers can also improve the quality of their networks without having to perform on-site measurements. If reception is poor in a particular area, network engineers can first perform tests in the digital twin, virtually moving existing towers to other positions, and then calculate how a new location would affect reception quality. Based on this analysis, the on-site tower can then be moved to the optimal position.
Simulation of New Components
Any new technology requires testing of the interaction of devices and solutions from various vendors. A digital twin of the network and the associated services with all their functions and behaviors could be used as a DevOps sandbox in which new services are first simulated, tested and adapted before being deployed in the real network.
The possibilities of digital twins are demonstrated by today’s computer games, in which players use their joysticks to move through virtual worlds. Even though these games are not digital images of real worlds, it is conceivable that we will move virtually through factories and machines in the future. For instance, technicians could perform a check of components and systems in this way. And all digital components — i.e., software — can be imported into the original from the digital twin. The metaverse reveals the direction developments will take. It is an environment in which we move as avatars through three-dimensional virtual worlds, flip switches and press buttons to operate machines.
What Is a Digital Twin?
A “digital twin” is a virtual representation in real time of a physical object or process. Objects and processes can be analyzed, diagnosed, simulated and controlled by using such a digital model. The network digital twin maps the current state and behavior of mobile and fixed networks along with their individual components. Data from multiple digital twins can be combined to provide an overall view of multiple real-world components and their associated processes.
