D2D and Homomorphic Encryption for MEC-Based Digital Twins in 6G Networks

The advent of sixth-generation (6G) networks promises to unlock previously unexplored opportunities for ultra-low latency communications, massive connectivity, and intelligent edge computing. However, these improvements pose significant security and privacy challenges, especially in data-intensive applications such as digital twins. In this paper, we propose the Secure Homomorphic Encryption and D2D-aided Digital Twin (SHEDT) framework, which integrates device-to-device (D2D) communication, homomorphic encryption, and multi-access edge computing (MEC) to improve security and efficiency in the creation of 6G-oriented digital twins. The SHEDT framework leverages D2D communications to enhance the performance in collecting data useful for the creation of digital twins. In addition, homomorphic encryption is exploited as a solution to enable operations on encrypted data without the need to decrypt it, thus ensuring end-to-end data confidentiality. Finally, integrating the digital twin into the MEC servers allows optimizing access to the data and information obtained. Performance evaluations show that SHEDT ensures an improvement in resource allocation, energy consumption of resource-constrained network nodes, and data transmission times. This paper paves the way for future work on secure, scalable, and efficient digital twin applications in 6G networks.