The Role of Digital Twin in Advancing Industrial Internet of Things: Insights, Applications, and Future Directions

To Date, the application of digital twin (DT) in the industrial internet of things (IIoT) has been continuously promoted and deepened, and has become the focus of the industry. IIoT serves as the foundational infrastructure that enables pervasive connectivity, real-time data acquisition, and intelligent control within industrial environments. DTs provide enterprises with an empathetic, virtual environment that enables them to manage and operate their production facilities in a more efficient and intelligent manner. However, there is not a special summary and analysis of the combinability and combination mode of the two. Therefore, this paper firstly sorted out the professional definitions, characteristics and frameworks of IIoT and DT, and deeply analyzed the semantic context of data flow. Secondly, this paper discusses the combinability and combination mode of IIoT and DT, and summarizes the enabling technologies and tools at each layers. Finally, the applications status of DT empowered IIoT in different fields was summarized, and the challenges of the combined application of the two were analyzed.