Rakuten Mobile views digital twins as a fundamental requirement to achieve the validation of efficient and reliable networks in the future
Japanese carrier Rakuten Mobile signed an agreement with the Technical University of Munich (TUM) with the aim of collaborating on research into digital twins in networks.
Under the terms of the deal, Rakuten Mobile will provide financial support to one post-doctoral researcher and two PhD students for a 42-month period and carry out collaborative research into digital twins and their applications in validating mobile networks.
Rakuten Mobile said it aims to create a fully autonomous network that uses an evolutionary-based approach for the creation, validation and application of logic within the network. The carrier noted that this approach requires large amounts of data and a highly adaptive testing environment, neither of which is compatible with traditional methods of verification. However digital twins, which can be realized in a hybrid form by combining tools, such as simulations and testbeds, in order to exhibit features of an actual network, provide a compatible verification method for testing autonomous networks, Rakuten Mobile said.
The aim of the research is to study the concept of digital twins in networking and their relationship to simulations and real testbeds. In the collaborative research, Rakuten Mobile and TUM will explore methods to utilize digital twins to drive existing network testing environments towards being sufficiently ready for future network design demands as needed by autonomously evolving networks.
In the Autonomous Network Platform, logic to be utilized in the network is created and then validated utilizing digital twins. The validated logic is then applied to the physical network.
“Decision technologies have advanced significantly over the years,” said Rakuten Mobile Global Head of AI and Autonomous Networks Miro Salem. “We view digital twins as a fundamental requirement to achieve the validation of efficient and reliable networks in the future.”
“In the future, networks will be operated with only minimum human interaction,” said Wolfgang Kellerer, head of the Chair of Communication Networks in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at TUM. “Digital Twins and new benchmarking concepts are expected to provide the basis for an autonomous network management and network adaptation to new situations.”
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is one of Europe’s leading research universities, with more than 600 professors, 48,000 students, and 11,000 academic and non-academic staff.
In February this year, Rakuten Mobile announced that the population coverage ratio for its 4G network in Japan has reached 96%.
Rakuten Mobile launched its first commercial services in April 2020. At launch, the telco had a population coverage ratio of 23.4%.
The Japanese telco said it will continue to expand network coverage and increase base station density to further improve the quality of its service across the country.
In September 2020, Rakuten Mobile launched 5G services in parts of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Hokkaido, Osaka and Hyogo. The service was initially offered via Non-Stand Alone (NSA) 5G architecture.
Rakuten Mobile and compatriot firm NEC had previously announced that the two companies had reached an agreement to jointly develop the containerized standalone (SA) 5G core network (5GC) to be used in Rakuten Mobile’s fully virtualized cloud native 5G network.
Under the terms of the deal, Rakuten Mobile and NEC said they will develop the containerized SA 5G mobile core to be made available on the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP).
