Joint Virtual Network Topology Design and Embedding for Cybertwin-Enabled 6G Core Networks

To efficiently allocate heterogeneous resources for customized services, in this article, we propose a network virtualization (NV)-based network architecture in cybertwin-enabled 6G core networks. In particular, we investigate how to optimize the virtual network (VN) topology (which consists of several virtual nodes and a set of intermediate virtual links) and determine the resultant VN embedding in a joint way over a cybertwin-enabled substrate network. To this end, we formulate an optimization problem whose objective is to minimize the embedding cost, while ensuring that the end-to-end (E2E) packet delay requirements are satisfied. The queueing network theory is utilized to evaluate each service’s E2E packet delay, which is a function of the resources assigned to the virtual nodes and virtual links for the embedded VN. We reveal that the problem under consideration is formally a mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP) and propose an improved brute-force search algorithm to find its optimal solutions. To enhance the algorithm’s scalability and reduce the computational complexity, we further propose an adaptively weighted heuristic algorithm to obtain near-optimal solutions to the problem for large-scale networks. Simulations are conducted to show that the proposed algorithms can effectively improve network performance compared to other benchmark algorithms.