Digital Twins in the Future Networking: A Use Case in IOWN

Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) Global Forum defines the future of networking and internet, through its photonics architecture with increased communication and computational capabilities in the IOWN technologies layers. These capabilities come together in the realization of the digital twins. This paper summarizes the status of the definition of the digital twins. In particular, the paper considers the capabilities of digital twins such as data analytics and simulations. Moreover, it describes the parties involved in the digital twin context and how they would enable creation and co-working through the digital twins. As an example digital twin of IOWN, the paper focuses on the “Green Twin” use case, where the digital twin patterns, life cycles, data flow and volume requirements, as well as business aspects such as stakeholders are described. Furthermore, it describes the application of the green twin into a smart campus for building energy efficiency.