In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital twins (DT) and 6G networks, the integration of large language models (LLMs) presents a novel approach to network management. This paper explores the application of LLMs in managing 6G-empowered DT networks, with a focus on optimizing data retrieval and communication efficiency in smart city scenarios. The proposed framework leverages LLMs for intelligent DT problem analysis and radio resource management (RRM) in fully autonomous way without any manual intervention. Our proposed framework -- LINKs, builds up a lazy loading strategy which can minimize transmission delay by selectively retrieving the relevant data. Based on the data retrieval plan, LLMs transform the retrieval task into an numerical optimization problem and utilizing solvers to build an optimal RRM, ensuring efficient communication across the network. Simulation results demonstrate the performance improvements in data planning and network management, highlighting the potential of LLMs to enhance the integration of DT and 6G technologies.

Emergency communication systems face disruptions due to packet loss, bandwidth constraints, poor signal quality, delays, and jitter in VoIP systems, leading to degraded real-time service quality. Victims in distress often struggle to convey critical information due to panic, speech disorders, and background noise, further complicating dispatchers' ability to assess situations accurately. Staffing shortages in emergency centers exacerbate delays in coordination and assistance. This paper proposes leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to address these challenges by reconstructing incomplete speech, filling contextual gaps, and prioritizing calls based on severity. The system integrates real-time transcription with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to generate contextual responses, using Twilio and AssemblyAI APIs for seamless implementation. Evaluation shows high precision, favorable BLEU and ROUGE scores, and alignment with real-world needs, demonstrating the model's potential to optimize emergency response workflows and prioritize critical cases effectively.

Wireless channel modeling plays a pivotal role in designing, analyzing, and optimizing wireless communication systems. Nevertheless, developing an effective channel modeling approach has been a longstanding challenge. This issue has been escalated due to the denser network deployment, larger antenna arrays, and wider bandwidth in 5G and beyond networks. To address this challenge, we put forth WRF-GS, a novel framework for channel modeling based on wireless radiation field (WRF) reconstruction using 3D Gaussian splatting. WRF-GS employs 3D Gaussian primitives and neural networks to capture the interactions between the environment and radio signals, enabling efficient WRF reconstruction and visualization of the propagation characteristics. The reconstructed WRF can then be used to synthesize the spatial spectrum for comprehensive wireless channel characterization. Notably, with a small number of measurements, WRF-GS can synthesize new spatial spectra within milliseconds for a given scene, thereby enabling latency-sensitive applications. Experimental results demonstrate that WRF-GS outperforms existing methods for spatial spectrum synthesis, such as ray tracing and other deep-learning approaches. Moreover, WRF-GS achieves superior performance in the channel state information prediction task, surpassing existing methods by a significant margin of more than 2.43 dB.

Telecommunication Networks (TNs) have become the most important infrastructure for data communications over the last century. Operations and maintenance (O&M) is extremely important to ensure the availability, effectiveness, and efficiency of TN communications. Different from the popular O&M technique for IT systems (e.g., the cloud), artificial intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps), O&M for TNs meets the following three fundamental challenges: topological dependence of network components, highly heterogeneous software, and restricted failure data. This article presents TelOps, the first AI-driven O&M framework for TNs, systematically enhanced with mechanism, data, and empirical knowledge. We provide a comprehensive comparison between TelOps and AIOps, and conduct a proof-of-concept case study on a typical O&M task (failure diagnosis) for a real industrial TN. As the first systematic AI-driven O&M framework for TNs, TelOps opens a new door to applying AI techniques to TN automation.

The increasing demand for efficient resource allocation in mobile networks has catalyzed the exploration of innovative solutions that could enhance the task of real-time cellular traffic prediction. Under these circumstances, federated learning (FL) stands out as a distributed and privacy-preserving solution to foster collaboration among different sites, thus enabling responsive near-the-edge solutions. In this paper, we comprehensively study the potential benefits of FL in telecommunications through a case study on federated traffic forecasting using real-world data from base stations (BSs) in Barcelona (Spain). Our study encompasses relevant aspects within the federated experience, including model aggregation techniques, outlier management, the impact of individual clients, personalized learning, and the integration of exogenous sources of data. The performed evaluation is based on both prediction accuracy and sustainability, thus showcasing the environmental impact of employed FL algorithms in various settings. The findings from our study highlight FL as a promising and robust solution for mobile traffic prediction, emphasizing its twin merits as a privacy-conscious and environmentally sustainable approach, while also demonstrating its capability to overcome data heterogeneity and ensure high-quality predictions, marking a significant stride towards its integration in mobile traffic management systems.

The advent of 6G/NextG networks comes along with a series of benefits, including extreme capacity, reliability, and efficiency. However, these networks may become vulnerable to new security threats. Therefore, 6G/NextG networks must be equipped with advanced Artificial Intelligence algorithms, in order to evade these attacks. Existing studies on the intrusion detection task rely on the train of shallow machine learning classifiers, including Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, and so on, yielding suboptimal performance. Others are based on deep neural networks consisting of static components, which are not conditional on the input. This limits their representation power and efficiency. To resolve these issues, we present the first study integrating Mixture of Experts (MoE) for identifying malicious traffic. Specifically, we use network traffic data and convert the 1D array of features into a 2D matrix. Next, we pass this matrix through convolutional neural network (CNN) layers followed by batch normalization and max pooling layers. After obtaining the representation vector via the CNN layers, a sparsely gated MoE layer is used. This layer consists of a set of experts (dense layers) and a router, where the router assigns weights to the output of each expert. Sparsity is achieved by choosing the most relevant experts of the total ones. Finally, we perform a series of ablation experiments to prove the effectiveness of our proposed model. Experiments are conducted on the 5G-NIDD dataset, a network intrusion detection dataset generated from a real 5G test network. Results show that our introduced approach reaches weighted F1-score up to 99.95% achieving comparable performance to existing approaches. Findings also show that our proposed model achieves multiple advantages over state-of-the-art approaches.

When Tim first tried ChatGPT, he wasn't very impressed. He had a play around, but ended up cancelling his subscription. Then he started having marriage troubles. Seeking to alleviate his soul-searching and sleepless nights, he took up journalling and found it beneficial. From there, it was a small step to unburdening himself to the chatbot, he says: "ChatGPT is the perfect journal – because it will talk back." Tim started telling the platform about himself, his wife, Jill, and their recurring conflicts.

This paper explores the application of large language models (LLMs) in designing strategic mechanisms -- including auctions, contracts, and games -- for specific purposes in communication networks. Traditionally, strategic mechanism design in telecommunications has relied on human expertise to craft solutions based on game theory, auction theory, and contract theory. However, the evolving landscape of telecom networks, characterized by increasing abstraction, emerging use cases, and novel value creation opportunities, calls for more adaptive and efficient approaches. We propose leveraging LLMs to automate or semi-automate the process of strategic mechanism design, from intent specification to final formulation. This paradigm shift introduces both semi-automated and fully-automated design pipelines, raising crucial questions about faithfulness to intents, incentive compatibility, algorithmic stability, and the balance between human oversight and artificial intelligence (AI) autonomy. The paper discusses potential frameworks, such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-based systems, to implement LLM-driven mechanism design in communication networks contexts. We examine key challenges, including LLM limitations in capturing domain-specific constraints, ensuring strategy proofness, and integrating with evolving telecom standards. By providing an in-depth analysis of the synergies and tensions between LLMs and strategic mechanism design within the IoT ecosystem, this work aims to stimulate discussion on the future of AI-driven information economic mechanisms in telecommunications and their potential to address complex, dynamic network management scenarios.

Industrial networks are undergoing rapid transformation driven by the convergence of emerging technologies that are revolutionizing conventional workflows, enhancing operational efficiency, and fundamentally redefining the industrial landscape across diverse sectors. Amidst this revolution, Digital Twin (DT) emerges as a transformative innovation that seamlessly integrates real-world systems with their virtual counterparts, bridging the physical and digital realms. In this article, we present a comprehensive survey of the emerging DT-enabled services and applications across industries, beginning with an overview of DT fundamentals and its components to a discussion of key enabling technologies for DT. Different from literature works, we investigate and analyze the capabilities of DT across a wide range of industrial services, including data sharing, data offloading, integrated sensing and communication, content caching, resource allocation, wireless networking, and metaverse. In particular, we present an in-depth technical discussion of the roles of DT in industrial applications across various domains, including manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, energy, agriculture, space, oil and gas, as well as robotics. Throughout the technical analysis, we delve into real-time data communications between physical and virtual platforms to enable industrial DT networking. Subsequently, we extensively explore and analyze a wide range of major privacy and security issues in DT-based industry. Taxonomy tables and the key research findings from the survey are also given, emphasizing important insights into the significance of DT in industries. Finally, we point out future research directions to spur further research in this promising area.

Third of NI adults visit porn sites, Ofcom finds Getty ImagesA new Ofcom report finds over 430,000 adults in Northern Ireland visited "pornographic content services" online in May 2024 Adults in Northern Ireland are more likely to look at pornography online than those in any other part of the UK. That is according to new research published by the communications regulator Ofcom. It said that more than 430,000 adults in Northern Ireland visited "pornographic content services" online in May 2024 - more than one third of the adult population. That was higher than the proportion of adults viewing similar content in Wales, Scotland and England. The figures come from Ofcom's Online Nation report for 2024, which looks into the UK's digital habits.