# Colosseum as a Digital Twin: Bridging Real-World Experimentation and Wireless Network Emulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.17063 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17063/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 29 Mar 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Calibrating Wireless Ray Tracing for Digital Twinning using Local Phase Error Estimates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12625/) (2023)
- [Conservative and Risk-Aware Offline Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.08421/) (2024)
- [CAVIAR: Co-simulation of 6G Communications, 3D Scenarios and AI for Digital Twins](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03310/) (2024)
- [Automatic AI Model Selection for Wireless Systems: Online Learning via Digital Twinning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15819/) (2024)
- [Network Digital Untwinning: Towards Backward Optimization of Digital Twins](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00169/) (2026)
- [On Transferring, Merging, and Splitting Task-Oriented Network Digital Twins](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02551/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

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).