Digital Twin Driven Service Self-Healing With Graph Neural Networks in 6G Edge Networks

6G edge networks strive to offer ubiquitous intelligent services, requiring a greater emphasis on network stability and reliability. However, current networks present a low automation degree of the operation, administration and maintenance process. Consequently, active service migration away from abnormal network nodes and links, as well as automatic and transparent service recovery from sudden anomalies, become challenging tasks. These conditions underscore the urgency for an innovative service self-healing mechanism for 6G edge networks. Digital twin (DT) technology uses modeling to represent physical entities, thereby facilitating lifecycle management. However, the application of DT technology in networks is still a burgeoning field of study. In this paper, we explore the DT-driven service self-healing mechanism in 6G edge networks. Initially, we design a DT-based architecture for service self-healing. Subsequently, we construct a performance prediction mechanism leveraging graph neural networks (GNNs) to devise an efficient prediction model, which aims to accurately infer network performance and promptly detect abnormal network conditions. To maintain fine-grained service stability amidst potential network anomalies, we propose a DT-driven service redeployment mechanism enhanced by GNNs. Comprehensive experimental results reveal that our proposed mechanism can accurately predict flow-level delays and identify abnormal links and nodes. Furthermore, the DT-driven service redeployment mechanism effectively reduces service delay and enhances network load balance.