A digital twin is a digital replica of a physical entity to which it is remotely connected. A digital twin can provide a rich representation of the corresponding physical entity and enables sophisticated control for various purposes. Although the concept of the digital twin is largely known, designing digital twins based systems has not yet been fully explored. In practice, digital twins can be applied in different ways leading to different architectural designs. To guide the architecture design process, we provide a pattern-oriented approach for architecting digital twin-based Internet of Things (IoT) systems. To this end, we propose a catalog of digital twin architecture design patterns that can be reused in the broad context of systems engineering. The patterns are described using the well-known documentation template and support the various phases in the systems engineering life cycle process. For illustrating the application of digital twin patterns, we adopt a case study in the agriculture and food domain.
Keywords: digital twins; farm management systems; internet of things; remote sensing and control; smart agriculture; system architecture design; system engineering; virtualization.