Abstract:
Digital Twin Technology (DTT) is a crucial concept in Industry 4.0, enabling the creation of virtual replicas of physical systems for simultaneous analysis, simulation, and control. Effective communication between digital and physical systems is essential for real-time interactions. This research focuses on studying and evaluating the performance of three communication protocols:
MQTT, HTTP, and WebSocket, in a Digital Twin setup comprising PLCnext technology, an IoT platform called ThingsBoard, and the Unity 3D engine. Latency measurements were taken during data uploads to the IoT platform and data retrieval from the IoT platform to Unity. The results indicate that the MQTT protocol (126.667 ms) has lower latency compared to the HTTP protocol (341.977 ms) when sending data to the ThingsBoard platform, owing to its simpler and lighter design. Additionally, the WebSocket protocol (259.322 ms) shows a slight advantage over HTTP in
retrieving data from the ThingsBoard platform to Unity, which is crucial for real-time interactions in a Digital Twin setup. The findings from this study provide critical information for selecting appropriate communication protocols in Digital Twin systems for Industry 4.0, aiming to enhance real-time interactions in the automation industry. This research marks an important step in the development and improvement of Digital Twin technology applications, fostering more efficient
and sustainable automation systems in the future.