Data Synchronization in Vehicular Digital Twin Network: A Game Theoretic Approach

A fundamental issue of the vehicular digital twin (DT) is efficiently synchronizing the data between the DT and the vehicular user (VUE). In this paper, we consider the heterogeneous vehicular networks (HetVNets) in which a VUE can connect to the network through different networks. The HetVNets can improve the efficiency of communication by providing seamless connections. However, the uneven distribution of VUEs and the dynamics of HetVNets make the environment more complex. Therefore, we propose the network selection algorithm for data synchronization between VUEs and DTs in the HetVNets, where the behaviour between the VUEs is considered as a competition for wireless resources. A learning-based prediction model residing in the DT is developed where the DT can predict the waiting time of each relay and transmit the predicted results to the VUE for decision-making. We model the network selection problem as a potential game considering both the transmission time and the waiting time obtained from the prediction model and prove the existence of Nash equilibrium (NE). We analyze the performance of the proposed algorithm, and simulation results show that our approach can effectively find the optimal strategy while achieving a fast convergence speed and high-level performance compared to the baselines.