VaN3Twin: the Multi-Technology V2X Digital Twin with Ray Tracing in the Loop

This paper presents VaN3Twin—the first open source, full-stack Network Digital Twin (NDT) framework for simulating the coexistence of multiple Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication technologies with accurate physical-layer modeling via ray tracing. VaN3Twin extends the ms-van3t simulator by integrating Sionna Ray Tracer (RT) in the loop, enabling high-fidelity representation of wireless propagation, including diverse Line of Sight (LoS) conditions with a focus on LoS blockage due to other vehicles’ meshes, Doppler effect, and site-dependent effects—e.g., scattering and diffraction. Unlike conventional simulation tools, the proposed framework supports realistic coexistence analysis across Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) and Cellular-V2X (C-V2X) technologies operating over a shared spectrum. A dedicated interference tracking module captures cross-technology interference at the time-frequency resource block level and enhances Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) estimation by eliminating artifacts such as the bimodal behavior induced by separate LoS/NLoS propagation models. Compared to field measurements, VaN3Twin reduces application-layer disagreement by 50% in rural and over 70% in urban environments with respect to current state of the art simulation tools, demonstrating its value for scalable and accurate digital twin–based V2X coexistence simulation.