Digital twin to improve the virtual-real integration of industrial IoT

Abstract The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) brings value-added services to traditional devices and has become an important business and technology mode in the industry 4.0 era. While, the combination of digital twin (DT) and the IoT can promote the integration of the physical world (real) and the digital world (virtual), which becomes the key to give play to the value of the IIoT. This research analyzes the concept of DT and several influential DT framework models and concludes that the implementation of DT focuses on data, models, and services (DMS framework). This framework is applied to the device acquisition layer and the remote system layer of IIoT, and the DT of the device is composed logically by constructing partial DT with different functions. The IoT system formed by this approach focuses on "device-DT-application". This method has guided the establishment of the IoT of Gas-insulated Switchgear (GIS) and been proved to be feasible. It proposes a unified architecture for IoT systems, which can flexibly support an internal extension of the DT and multi-DT connection to map complex systems better in the digital world. It isolates the direct access of business to equipment, strengthens the division and cooperation between local and cloud, and promotes the integration and synchronization of virtual and real. Also, this study provides some references for the collaborative framework between the edge and the cloud.