Digital Twins for 6g: Fundamental Theory, Technology and Applications

Digital twin (DT) technology is a real-time evolving digital duplicate of a physical object or process that contains all its history. It is enabled by massive real-time multi-source data collection and analysis. While 6G is considered as an enabler of digital twins, DT can also be a facilitator for integrating AI and 6G towards reliable, pervasive and efficient intelligent technologies.

While the DT concept is familiar among aerospace and industrial engineers, it is a relatively new topic among electronic, electrical, computer, communications and networking engineers. For future massive-scale industrial internet-of-things (IoT) applications facilitated by DTs, a 6G network will be much more advantageous than its 5G counterpart.

Digital Twins for 6G: Fundamental theory, technology and applications aims to bring together knowledge from industrial practitioners and researchers, and to introduce novel concepts that can help address the challenges associated with this interdisciplinary topic. The authors will cover fundamentals, enabling technologies, standards and advanced topics of DT and 6G to demystify the DT concept and its networking requirements and benefits, support a broader understanding of DT and its relationship with 6G to a larger audience, support learning and understanding for researchers and professionals working on 5G and 6G, and create a foundation on DT and 6G for the international research community.

This book is intended to be both a tutorial of the important topics around digital twin and advanced wireless communications technologies, including 6G, as well as an advanced overview for technical professionals in the communications industry, technical managers, and researchers in both academia and industry.

Hamed Ahmadi is a reader in digital engineering at the School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, University of York, UK. He is also an adjunct academic at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University College Dublin, Ireland. He received his PhD from the National University of Singapore in 2012 where he was a SINGA PhD scholar at the Institute for Infocomm Research, A-STAR. Since then, he worked in different academic and industrial positions in the Republic of Ireland and the UK. Dr Ahmadi has published more than 100 peer-reviewed book chapters, journal, and conference papers. He is the associate editor in chief of IEEE Communication Standards magazine, a senior member of IEEE, and a Fellow of UK Higher Education Academy. He has been the Networks working group chair of COST Actions CA15104 (IRACON) and CA20120 (INTERACT). He had chairing roles in organizing and technical program committees of several IEEE major conferences including IEEE ICC 2024, EUCNC 2019, and PIMRC 2024 and 2019. He is also the treasurer of the IEEE UK and Ireland Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. His current research interests include the design, analysis, and optimization of wireless communications networks, the application of machine learning in wireless networks, open radio access and networking, green networks, airborne networks, digital twins of networks, and Internet of Things.

Trung Q. Duong is a Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) and a full professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. He is also the adjunct chair professor in telecommunications at Queen's University Belfast, UK. His current research interests include quantum communications, wireless communications, machine learning, and real-time optimization. He has received two prestigious awards from the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng): RAEng Research Chair (2021-2025) and the RAEng Research Fellow (2015-2020). He is the recipient of the prestigious Newton Prize 2017. He is a Fellow of IEEE and a Fellow of AAIA.

Avishek Nag received the BE (Honors) degree from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, in 2005; the MTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, in 2007; and the PhD degree from the University of California, Davis, in 2012. Dr Nagwas the recipient of the Best Paper Award at the 2nd IEEE Advanced Networks and Telecommunication Symposium in 2008 and has published over 100 publications including journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters. His research interests include, but are not limited to, cross-layer optimization in wired and wireless networks, network reliability, mathematics of networks (optimization, graph theory), network virtualization, software-defined networks, machine learning, data analytics, blockchain, and the Internet of Things. Dr Nag is a senior member of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) and also the outreach lead for Ireland for the IEEE UK and Ireland Blockchain Group.

Vishal Sharma is a senior lecturer in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EEECS) at Queen's University Belfast (QUB), Northern Ireland, UK. At QUB, he focuses on cyber defense and security and leads research on drone security, digital twins (DT), and blockchain systems. Since 2022, he has been affiliated with the Global Innovation Institute as a Fellow and works with the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) and Centre for Data Science and Scalable Computing (DSSC). He is the director of the Innovation-by-design lab at QUB. He leads the British Computer Society (BCS) Accreditation for QUB and is the chair of the Computer Science Programme Review Working Group. He is the co-investigator for the Northern Ireland Advanced Research and Engineering Centre (ARC). He has authored/co-authored more than 130 journal/conference articles and book chapters, co-edited three books, and won seven best paper awards. He has served on the editorial board of IEEE Communications Magazine and as section editor-in-chief of Drones journal. Currently, he serves as associate editor of CAAI Transactions on Intelligence Technology, IET Networks, and ICT Express. He is also the co-chair of the IEEE UK and Ireland Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. He is a senior member of IEEE and a professional member of ACM. He received his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from Thapar University, India.

Berk Canberk is a professor in the School of Computing, Engineering and The Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University, UK. He is also an adjunct professor in Artificial Intelligence and Data Engineering Department at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. He is also an adjunct professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. His research focus includes digital twin networks, AI-enabled autonomous 5G+ systems, data-driven networks, and unmanned aerial networks. He is a senior member of the IEEE, a member of the ACM, and a member of the IET. He serves as an editor for IEEE Transactions in Vehicular Technology, Elsevier Computer Networks, and Elsevier Computer Communications Journal. He is a board member and observer of the IEEE 1900.5 Cognitive Radio for Dynamic Spectrum Access and IEEE Tactile Internet Standardization Working Groups. He is a group member of the Internet Research Task Force's Network Management Research Group (IRTF NMRG). He has been involved in several international conferences as technical program co-chair, symposium chair, demo/poster chair, regional chair, publicity chair, tutorial chair, and TPC member. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey.