Interoperable Edge-to-Cloud IIoT Architecture for Digital Twin Mining Ecosystems

Abstract

The mining industry is increasingly adopting Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), edge computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital twin technologies in order to improve operational efficiency, sustainability, safety, and industrial automation. However, the integration of heterogeneous industrial systems, distributed sensing infrastructures, edge devices, and cloud-native services remains a major challenge due to interoperability limitations, deployment complexity, and communication heterogeneity across mining environments. This paper presents an interoperable edge-to-cloud IIoT architecture developed in the context of the Horizon Europe MINE.IO project for supporting scalable digital mining ecosystems. The proposed framework adopts a layered and service-oriented architecture integrating industrial sensing systems, edge gateways, interoperability middleware technologies, cloud-native analytics services, and distributed digital mining applications within a unified communication environment. In this context, open-source interoperability and industrial IoT middleware technologies, a set of complementary open-source IIoT middleware technologies are investigated in order to support distributed communication workflows, edge-to-cloud orchestration, protocol interoperability, and scalable industrial analytics services. The paper further specifies the EdgeX–FIWARE integration boundary, the associated data mappings, and the distinct role of the Eclipse Arrowhead control plane. Pilot-oriented functional validation at two contrasting MINE.IO sites supports the feasibility of the proposed gateway-to-cloud approach; however, consolidated latency, throughput, reliability, and resource-utilization measurements were not available at the time of manuscript preparation and remain part of the ongoing evaluation.