Towards the Development of Digital Twins for OWC Networks

Digital Twin (DT) technology is often used to replicate physical systems in the digital domain and gain access to monitoring, managing, automating, and predicting the system's behavior and state. The modeling of the physical magnitudes becomes important when performing any possible operations on the obtained data sets. This article discusses the modeling and procedures used for the development of a base for DT systems with optical wireless communications (OWC). OWC is adversely affected by wireless channel impairments that must be addressed for reliable communications. The impact of atmospheric turbulence affects the free-space optical (FSO) links, which are a branch of optical wireless communication (OWC). This current research provides insight into a machine learning-based prediction model for predicting the scintillation index of an FSO link using a turbulence emulator chamber. The paper also discusses the fundamental concepts of DT development from the point of view of real-time data flow, implemented through an OWC link, highlighting connection interfaces and automatic control. In the context of DTs, modeling approaches and integration of intelligent systems play a crucial role. This article combines these two areas to provide some initial observations of the research activities carried out towards the development of a proof-ofconcept base for DT employing OWC as part of its target system and as the data interface.