Open Wireless Digital Twin: End-to-End 5G Mobility Emulation with OpenAirInterface and Ray Tracing

Abstract

This study presents an end-to-end wireless digital twin platform constructed using open-source software and open data to enhance the evaluation of mobile communication systems. The proposed open wireless digital twin (OWDT) integrates OpenAirInterface (OAI) for Fifth-Generation New Radio (5G NR) protocol stack emulation and NVIDIA Sionna RT for high-resolution ray-tracing-based radio propagation modeling. This integration enables the realistic emulation of 5G wireless communication in mobility scenarios on a CPU-based Linux system, leveraging real-world building data to bridge the gap between theoretical simulations and real-world deployments. The platform also incorporates OAI FlexRIC, which is an implementation aligned with the O-RAN near-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (near-RT RIC), to dynamically monitor key performance indicators (KPIs). Through extensive evaluation in urban environments, this study demonstrated the validity of the emulation framework, revealing its capability to replicate real-world communication dynamics with high fidelity. The results underscore the potential of the OWDT to accelerate wireless system development, reduce experimental costs, and optimize network configurations.