Dissecting the Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Digital Twins as a Service

Milan Groshev,Robert Gazda,Carlos Guimaraes,Antonio De La Oliva

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3098109

Milan Groshev, Robert Gazda + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2021.3098109

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Abstract

Recent advances on Edge computing, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and 5G are stimulating the interest of the industrial sector to satisfy the stringent and real-time requirements of their applications. Digital Twin is a key piece in the industrial digital transformation and its benefits are very well studied in the literature. However, designing and implementing a Digital Twin system that integrates all the emerging technologies and meets the connectivity requirements (e.g., latency, reliability) is an ambitious task. Therefore, prototyping the system is required to gradually validate and optimize Digital Twin solutions. In this work, an Edge Robotics Digital Twin system is implemented as a prototype that embodies the concept of Digital Twin as a Service (DTaaS). Such system enables real-time applications such as visualization and remote control, requiring low-latency and high reliability. The capability of the system to offer potential savings by means of computation offloading are analyzed in different deployment configurations. Moreover, the impact of different wireless channels (e.g., 5G, 4G and WiFi) to support the data exchange between a physical device and its virtual components are assessed within operational Digital Twins. Results show that potentially 16% of CPU and 34% of MEM savings can be achieved by virtualizing and offloading software components in the Edge. In addition, they show that 5G connectivity enables remote control of 20 ms, appearing as the most promising radio access technology to support the main requirements of Digital Twin systems.

Highlights

Industry 4.0, or the industry of the future, is offering a new way of understanding and organizing distinct manufacturing processes, pushed by the increasing interest of industrial verticals to accomplish a digital transformation of their industries
This study presents a Operational Digital Twin prototype that builds on top of 5G connectivity, Edge computing and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), aiming to give insights into the potential returns and performance improvements for industrial verticals willing to invest on 5G and Edge deployments
Two deployment configurations are considered: (i) the Control, Motion Planning and Interface VNFs deployed in the robotic arm; and (ii) the Control, Motion Planning and Interface VNFs offloaded in the Edge server

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Industry 4.0, or the industry of the future, is offering a new way of understanding and organizing distinct manufacturing processes, pushed by the increasing interest of industrial verticals to accomplish a digital transformation of their industries. A. ENABLERS FOR INDUSTRY 4.0-BASED DIGITAL TWIN Digital Twin solutions in manufacturing need to integrate network virtualization, computing and wireless technologies, so that the most stringent requirements of real-time applications are met. Industrial Cloud [34] and Edge computing [21] are known concepts to the manufacturing world They enable computation and control to be offloaded to a computing infrastructure, making Digital Twins more scalable, real-time and ensure accessibility to the physical devices anytime and from anywhere. MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION As a first validation stage, a simplistic mathematical formulation of the Edge Robotic Digital Twin is modeled and implemented as a network service composed of different VNFs distributed across the robotic arm and the Edge or Cloud In this formulation, different wireless technologies are considered to provide the connectivity between the robotic arm and the network, namely 4G, 5G and WiFi. 4G and 5G are the current and future wireless technology in the licensed spectrum, whereas WiFi is the most widespread wireless technology in the unlicensed spectrum. The previous results provided hints for narrowing down the experimental study presented : (i) on-device computing or Edge-offloading as the feasible approaches; and (ii) 5G as the most promising wireless channel, WiFi and 4G are still considered for comparison purposes

PROTOTYPE IMPLEMENTATION AND BASELINE PERFORMANCE

RESOURCE CONSUMPTION AND SAVINGS POTENTIAL

IMPACT OF RADIO ACCESS TECHNOLOGIES

DISCUSSION

Findings

VIII. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK