Wireless network emulators are being increasingly used for developing and evaluating new solutions for Next Generation (NextG) wireless networks. However, the reliability of the solutions tested on emulation platforms heavily depends on the precision of the emulation process, model design, and parameter settings. To address, obviate, or minimize the impact of errors of emulation models, in this work, we apply the concept of Digital Twin (DT) to large-scale wireless systems. Specifically, we demonstrate the use of Colosseum, the world's largest wireless network emulator with hardware-in-the-loop, as a DT for NextG experimental wireless research at scale. As proof of concept, we leverage the Channel emulation scenario generator and Sounder Toolchain (CaST) to create the DT of a publicly available over-the-air indoor testbed for sub-6 GHz research, namely, Arena. Then, we validate the Colosseum DT through experimental campaigns on emulated wireless environments, including scenarios concerning cellular networks and jamming of Wi-Fi nodes, on both the real and digital systems. Our experiments show that the DT is able to provide a faithful representation of the real-world setup, obtaining an average similarity of up to 0.987 in throughput and 0.982 in Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR).

翻译：无线网络仿真器正越来越多地被用于开发和评估下一代无线网络的新方案。然而，在仿真平台上测试的方案的可靠性在很大程度上取决于仿真过程、模型设计和参数设置的精度。为了解决、避免或最小化仿真模型误差的影响，在本工作中，我们将数字孪生（DT）的概念应用于大规模无线系统。具体而言，我们展示了Colosseum（世界上最大的具有硬件在环的无线网络仿真器）作为下一代无线实验研究的大规模数字孪生体的应用。作为概念验证，我们利用信道仿真场景生成器和探测工具链（CaST）创建了Arena（一个用于6 GHz以下研究的公开可用的空中室内测试平台）的数字孪生体。随后，我们通过在仿真无线环境（包括涉及蜂窝网络和Wi-Fi节点干扰的场景）上的实验活动，在真实系统和数字系统上验证了Colosseum数字孪生体。实验表明，该数字孪生体能够忠实呈现真实世界配置，在吞吐量方面平均相似度达到0.987，在信干噪比（SINR）方面平均相似度达到0.982。