ORGANIZERS:
Behnam Shariati (Fraunhofer HHI)
Shoichiro Oda, (Fujitsu Limited)

ABSTRACT:
Digital Twin (DT) of optical networks has recently received significant attention from our community as a tool that can use historical data, real-world monitoring data, and expert knowledge to provide a highly reliable simulation environment for modeling, optimization, and predicting the future behavior of the network. DTs may appear in different forms from the DT of a single sub-system, the DT of an entire system, or the DT of a complex meshed network. The advancements in the monitoring capabilities of coherent receivers, versatile telemetry collection protocols for optical line systems and terminals, as well as the fast pace for the realization of self-healing networks, justify the current trends toward the development of a full-fledged DT of optical networks.
Driven by the recent breakthroughs in the development of Large Language Models (LLM) and the success of Generative AI (GenAI) models such as ChatGPT, Bard, and Llama 2, one could see numerous use-cases where GenAI could be valuable for telecom networks, from facilitating device configuration scripts with no limitation on vendor-specific syntaxes, to generating large amount of synthetic, yet realistic, data samples of real-world network failures. This workshop is going to trigger a discussion around the current status of DT development for optical networks and offer a medium to exchange opinions on how GenAI could help DTs become more successful. For instance, will creating a foundational model of various network assets – fiber plants, transceivers, ROAMDs, amplifiers, etc. – result in DTs that can model the real-world phenomenon closer to reality? Can foundation models relying on real-time monitoring data and operational DTs replace engineers to design and operate networks? What are the challenges ahead for curating a multi-purpose, clean dataset for creating such foundational models?

AGENDA:
Session 1
- Hideki Nishizawa (NTT Network Innovation Laboratories)
- Ioannis Tomkos (University of Patras)
- Inwoong Kim (Fujitsu Network Communications)
- Yvan Pointurier (Huawei)
- Ricard Vilalta (Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya)
- Achim Autenrieth (Adtran)

Session 2
- Pooyan Safari (Fraunhofer HHI)
- Cen Wang (KDDI Research)
- Takahito Tanimura (Hitachi)
- Danshi Wang (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications)
- Panel