IEEE 1451 Smart Sensor Digital Twin Federation for IoT/CPS Research

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are smart systems that include engineered, interacting networks of physical and cyber components. CPS are concerned with the collaborative and interactive activities between cyber and physical components through sensing and actuation. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1451, a family of smart transducer interface standards, defines a set of open, common, network- independent communication interfaces for smart transducers (sensors or actuators) to achieve sensor data interoperability between cyber and physical components of CPS. The IEEE 1516 high-level architecture (HLA) is a standard for the modeling and simulation of distributed, heterogeneous processes. CPS experimentation often requires the integration of different domain-specific simulation tools into a common platform using a method called co-simulation. In order to facilitate a wide range of CPS simulations and experiments, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a universal CPS environment for federation (UCEF), which is a toolset for designing and implementing federated, collaborative, and interactive experiments for CPS using HLA.This paper introduces an IEEE 1451 smart sensor digital twin federation, which has been developed using UCEF. The digital twin is a digital simulator or digital replica of a real IEEE 1451 smart sensor. The digital twin emulates both desired, non-linear behaviors and failure modes to simulate a real sensor in the field. This federation consists of three federates: an IEEE 1451 smart sensor digital twin federate (DTF), an IEEE 1451 digital twin tester federate (DTTF), and a federation experiment manager. In this federation, the DTTF can communicate with the DTF via HLA interactions that represent IEEE P1451.1 request and response messages. One federated experiment using three instances of IEEE 1451 digital twins is described in detail and the experimental results are provided in this paper. This federation provides a foundation for CPS research and experiments in the NIST CPS testbed.