Reservoir computing for enhanced fidelity in hierarchical digital twin ecosystems


Por: Mendula, M, Miozzo, M, Bellavista, P, Dini, P

Publicada: 1 ene 2026 Ahead of Print: 1 sep 2025
Resumen:
The growing complexity of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) in industrial and manufacturing environments calls for more sophisticated methods to represent heterogeneous assets and processes. In response, hierarchical Digital Twins (DTs)–virtual representations of physical, taxonomy-based processes–offer transparent, layered modeling of diverse data sources. This layered structure fuels renewed interest in intelligent engines capable of extracting meaningful insights and mapping them within the stratified DT ecosystem. While current Intelligent Digital Twin (I-DT) engines based on Deep Learning are computationally demanding, lightweight alternatives like Reservoir Computing (RC) offer efficient solutions with low training costs and fast inference for modeling causal dynamics. This inherent trade-off between performance and practicality underscores the limitations of evaluating I-DTs on accuracy alone. To address this gap, this work introduces a novel metric, Fidelity, designed to provide a comprehensive evaluation. Unlike traditional approaches, Fidelity also accounts for maintainability and deployability, especially in contexts involving time-varying and hierarchical data dynamics. Extensive experiments on two multimodal datasets demonstrate the competitiveness of our RC-based engine and highlight the value of introducing Fidelity for effectively profiling I-DTs. Specifically, our RC-based engine, identified as optimal through a higher Fidelity score, consumes an order of magnitude less energy and achieves up to 39 % higher accuracy (about 10 % increase on average) compared to both canonical and other RC-based alternatives. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Filiaciones:
Mendula, M:
 Ctr Tecnol Telecomunicac Catalunya CTTC, Castelldefels, Spain

Miozzo, M:
 Ctr Tecnol Telecomunicac Catalunya CTTC, Castelldefels, Spain

Bellavista, P:
 Univ Bologna, Dept Comp Sci & Engn, Bologna, Italy

Dini, P:
 Ctr Tecnol Telecomunicac Catalunya CTTC, Castelldefels, Spain
ISSN: 0167739X
Editorial
Elsevier, RADARWEG 29, 1043 NX AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, Países Bajos
Tipo de documento: Article
Volumen: 176 Número:
Páginas:
WOS Id: 001578776300001
imagen Green Submitted, hybrid, All Open Access; Green Open Access; Hybrid Gold Open Access

FULL TEXT

imagen Accepted Version
Accesible: 02/01/2028

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