A Digital Twin (DT) is a digital replica of a physical object in the digital world, allowing users to interact with it to, e.g., perform real time monitoring and/or data-driven decision making, decoupling the interactions with the physical object itself. Our research investigates the interplay between DTs and networks under different perspectives. On one hand, DTs can be used to replicate a network itself, facilitating and innovating network management operations. On the other hand, careful network orchestration is required to instantiate DTs in an effective and scalable fashion.
Another research activity focuses on DTs of cyber-physical systems, i.e. complex engineered systems where cyber and physical components are strongly interconnected. Multi-model simulation environments and formal verification techniques are investigated for reliability measurements, on-line monitoring, predictive maintenance and analysis of safety properties, also in case of faults and cyber-attacks.
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