China Mobile and ZTE have recently jointly completed the industry's first wireless network digital twin application for XR (Extended Reality) service in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province.
The test results have shown that the twinning precision of XR has reached over 90% in areas such as parks and squares, etc. This marks a key step in applying digital twin technology to wireless networks, laying a solid foundation for the following XR service experience guarantee and network policy optimization.
The development of 5G has welcomed the steady introduction of new applications, increasingly diversified terminal types and capabilities with multi-band, multi-mode collaborative networking becoming prevalent. In such a complex network, how to efficiently optimize network configuration and accurately guarantee the quality of user experience across different services have become topics of great interest in the industry.
The wireless network digital twin can implement digital modeling and dynamic simulation for base stations, wireless channels, terminals, core networks and services based on COTS servers, building high-precision digital twins for physical networks. Through mutual data interaction and performance verification with the physical network, the wireless network digital twin can help operators optimize network resource allocation, accurately guarantee user experience and implement trial-and-error innovation at low cost.
High-precision service modeling is the key to unleashing the potential capabilities of digital twin applications. In the recent XR application in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, testing engineers conducted XR tests in more than 70 locations under the coverage of 130 5G base stations in the physical network.
At the same time, ZTE's high-fidelity wireless network digital twin platform performed network and application performance twinning of the same XR service. By comparing the differences between the key performance indicators, the twinning precision can be calculated. The results of large-scale fixed-point tests have shown that the twinning precision of XR application has reached over 90% in areas such as parks and squares.
XR, as the key technology that opens up the door to the metaverse, is coming into our daily life under the catalysis of 5G. China Mobile and ZTE will further cooperate to continue the exploration of XR experience guarantee and policy optimization based on the wireless network digital twin, so as to empower more 5G new services such as streaming and cloud gaming.
In the future, the application of wireless network digital twins will expand to include fields such as network planning, construction, maintenance and optimization, achieving a highly autonomous and intelligent network.
