Digital Twin based Internet of Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV), as one subset of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the smart transportation area, integrates vehicle networks with sensors and actuators. By connecting all sensors to the network, the IoV enables smart transportation (i.e., autonomous vehicles) and makes smart cities a reality. In smart transportation systems, roadside units (RSUs) capture all vehicle information and serve as gateways. However, smart transportation infrastructure has yet to mature in the current stage. RSUs are insufficient to support all vehicles. Meanwhile, the low computational capability of vehicles makes it challenging to recompute the driving route as the road environment changes. To address the problem of insufficient RSU coverage, one protocol called IEEE 802.11p enables vehicle-to-vehicle communication using relays. Nonetheless, data transfer among vehicles via relays is still time-consuming for a large-scale transportation network. To deal with the above issues, in this paper, we propose an IoV framework using digital twins (DTs) to digitize the IoV environment and assign nearby IoT gateways compatible with the RSU communication protocol. This framework lets DTs update the vehicle’s driving route based on real-time information. With a case study, we evaluate the efficacy of DT-assisted IoV based on communication latency and vehicle driving efficiency. Our evaluation results confirm that the proposed framework can efficiently enhance communication latency when the relay needs to pass through two or more vehicles and reduce travel time when vehicles receive updated route information at intersections.