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Internet-of-Things Based Smart Cities: Recent Advances and Challenges

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IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE 1

Internet-of-Things Based Smart Cities: Recent

Advances and Challenges
Yasir Mehmood, Farhan Ahmad, Ibrar Yaqoob, Asma Adnane,
Muhammad Imran, and Sghaier Guizani

Abstract—The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is the novel cutting-edge technology which proffers to connect plethora of digital
devices endowed with several sensing, actuation and computing capabilities with the Internet, thus offers manifold new
services in the context of a smart city. The appealing IoT services and big data analytics are enabling smart city initiatives
all over the world. These services are transforming cities by improving infrastructure, transportation systems, reduced
traffic congestion, waste management and the quality of human life. In this paper, we devise a taxonomy to best bring
forth a generic overview of IoT paradigm for smart cities, integrated information and communication technologies (ICT),
network types, possible opportunities and major requirements. Moreover, an overview of the up-to-date efforts from
standard bodies is presented. Later, we give an overview of existing open source IoT platforms for realizing smart city
applications followed by several exemplary case studies. In addition, we summarize the latest synergies and initiatives
worldwide taken to promote IoT in the context of smart cities. Finally, we highlight several challenges in order to give
future research directions.

Index Terms—Internet-of-Things, Smart City, Traffic Congestion, ICT, Standard Bodies, Open Source.

1 I NTRODUCTION
T HE Internet-of-Things (IoT) is a revolu-
tionary communication paradigm which
aims to bring forth an invisible and innova-
tive framework to connect a plethora of digital
devices with the Internet. Thus, it intends at
making the Internet more immersive and per-
vasive [1]. The emerging IoT market is conti-
nously gaining momentum as operators, ven-
dors, manufacturers, and enterprises begin to
recognize the opportunities it offers. According
• Y. Mehmood is with the Sustainable Communication Net-
works (ComNets) research group, Faculty of Electrical En-
gineering, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany. (E-mail:
ym@comnets.uni-bremen.de)
• F. Ahmad and A. Adnane are with the College of Engineering
and Technology, University of Derby, Derby, United Kingdom.
(E-mail: {f.ahmad,a.adnane}@derby.ac.uk)
• I. Yaqoob is with Centre for Mobile Cloud Comput-
ing Research, Faculty of Computer Science and Informa-
tion Technology, University of Malaya, Malaysia. (E-mail:
ibraryaqoob@siswa.um.edu.my)
• M. Imran is with the College of Computer and Information
Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.
(E-mail: dr.m.imran@ieee.org)
• S. Guizani is working in the Alfaisal University, Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia.(Email: sguizani@alfaisal.edu)
• Corresponding author is Yasir Mehmood
to the latest IDC forecast1 , the worldwide IoT
market will reach to 1.7 trillion in 2020 up from
655.8 billion USD in 2014 with a compound
annual growth rate of 16.9%. The devices alone
are expected to represent 31.8% of the total
worldwide IoT market in 2020. This greater
percentage of the revenue in 2020 is expected by
building IoT platforms, application softwares,
and service-related offerings.
A smart city is a complex ecosystem char-
acterized by the intensive use of ICT, aim-
ing at making the cities more attractive, more
sustainable and a unique place for innova-
tion and entrepreneurship [2]. The major stake-
holders include application developers, service
providers, citizens, government and public ser-
vice providers, research community, and plat-
form developers. Furthermore, the smart city
cycle consists of numerous ICT technologies,
development platforms, maintenance and sus-
tainability, Apps for evolving citizens, and tech-
1. https://www.telecompaper.com/news/global-iot-
market-to-reach-usd-17-tln-in-2020-idc–1085269 (accessed
on: October 20, 2016)
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE 2

Fig. 1: An illustration of IoT based smart city.

nical, social as well as economic key perfor- hensive survey of the architectures, protocols
mance indicators (KPIs). Consequently, IoT sys- and enabling technologies for a web-service
tems will play a fundamental role in the de- based IoT framework in the Padova smart
ployment of large scale heterogeneous infras- city project. The proof of concept implementa-
tructures. A high level illustration of an IoT tion with numerous technical solutions aim to
based smart city is given in Figure 1. monitor street lighting, the quality of air and
IoT based smart city applications can be identification of most critical issues. A survey
categorized on the basis of network type, scal- on the fundamental IoT elements in realizing
ability, coverage, flexibility, heterogeneity, re- smart cities was conducted in [4] which also
peatability and end-user involvements [3]. In described a case study on noise monitoring.
general, these applications can be grouped into Nathalie et al. [5] proposed a different perspec-
personal and home, utilities, mobile, and enter- tive of smart cities in which IoT devices were
prises. For instance, personal and home applica- considered service providers mimicking cloud
tions include ubiquitous e-healthcare services based services. The proposal offered a higher
to live independently via Body Area Networks level of abstraction to deploy innovative ubiq-
(BANs) which help a doctor to monitor patients uitous applications by eliminating the barriers
remotely. Utilities applications include smart between physical IoT devices and logical (cloud
grid, smart metering/monitoring, water net- service providers) worlds. A generic top down
work monitoring, and video based surveillance. smart city architecture was proposed in [6] in
Similarly, mobile applications include intelligent which service providers play a role of central
transportation system (ITS) and logistics, traf- information unit that is connected to a set of IoT
fic management, congestion control, and waste based services. It also offers IoT convergence
management. Additionally, IoT based enter- and acceptance of numerous ICT technologies
prize applications usually consist of a network for realizing smart cities.
of things within a work environment. Although several studies exist on IoT and
Several research efforts have been made to smart cities, convergence of these two areas
integrate IoT with smart city environments. For grants further academic efforts for flourishing
instance, Zanella et al. [1] presented a compre- of IoT-based smart cities. Thus, unlike other
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE 3

studies, this paper best bring forths an IoT IoT (C-IoT). In Release 13, 3GPP plans to further
based smart cities taxonomy, prime open source improve coverage, battery lifetime as well as
platforms, case studies of recent deployments device complexity [7]. Besides well-known ex-
as well as unearths several open research chal- isting protocols, LoRa alliance standardizes the
lenges. The contributions of this study are as LoRaWAN protocol to support smart city appli-
follows: cations to primarily ensure interoperability be-
• First, we devise a taxonomy of IoT based tween several operators. Moreover, SIGFOX is
smart city environment. an ultra narrowband radio technology with full
• We present an overview of major open star-based infrastructure offers a high scalable
platforms for smart cities. global network for realizing smart city applica-
• Further, we present recent synergies and a tions with extremely low power consumption.
number of case studies on various smart A comparative summary2 of the major commu-
city deployments reported by various en- nication protocols is presented in Table 1.
terprises.
• Finally, we unearth several IoT related
2.2 Service Providers
open research challenges to give future
directions. Pike Research on smart cities estimated this
market will grow to hundreds of billion dollars
These contributions are organized into the sec-
by 2020, with an annual growth of nearly 16
tions from 2 to 5, and the conclusion is drawn
billion. IoT is recognized as a potential source
in section 6.
to increase revenue of service providers. Thus,
well-known worldwide service providers have
2 I OT BASED S MART C ITY TAXONOMY already started exploring this novel cutting-
This section presents a taxonomy of IoT based edge communication paradigm. Major ser-
smart cities which categorizes the literature on vice providers include Telefonica, SK telecom,
the basis of existing communication protocols, Nokia, Ericsson, Vodafone, NTT Docomo, Or-
major service providers, network types, stan- ange, Telenor group and AT&T which offer
dardization efforts, offered services, and cru- variety of services and platforms for smart city
cial requirements. An overview of the devised applications such as ITS and logistics, smart
smart city taxonomy is depicted in Figure 2. metering, home automation and e-healthcare.

2.1 Communication Protocols 2.3 Network Types

IoT based smart city realization significantly
relies on numerous short and wide range com-
munication protocols to transport data between
devices and backend servers. Most prominent
short range wireless technologies include Zig-
Bee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Wireless Metropolitan
Area Network (WiMAX) and IEEE 802.11p
which are primarily used in smart meter-
ing, e-healthcare and vehicular communication.
Wide range technologies such as Global System
for Mobile communication (GSM) and GPRS,
Long-Term Evolution (LTE), LTE-Advanced are
commonly utilized in ITS such as vehicle-to-
infrastructure (V2I), mobile e-healthcare, smart
grid and infotainment services. Additionally,
LTE-M is considered as an evolution for cellular
IoT based smart city applications rely on nu-
merous network topologies to accomplish a
fully autonomous environment. The capillary
IoT networks offer services over a short range.
Examples include wireless local area networks
(WLANs), BANs and wireless personal area
networks (WPANs). The application areas in-
clude indoor e-healthcare services, home au-
tomation, street lighting. On the other hand,
applications such as ITS, mobile e-healthcare
and waste management use wide area net-
works (WANs), metropolitan area networks
(MANs), and mobile communication networks.
2. https://www.globallogic.com/wp-content/uploads/
2015/12/The-role-of-telecommunications-in-smart-cities.pdf
(accessed on: December 10, 2016. )
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE 4

Fig. 2: A representation of IoT-based smart city taxonomy.

The above networks pose distinct features in packets using header compression and neigh-
terms of data, size, coverage, latency require- bor discovery optimization. Moreover, ROLL
ments, and capacity. (Routing Over Low-power and Lossy net-
works) WG standardized RPL routing protocol
2.4 Activities of Standard Bodies for smart city applications. In addition, several
IETF WGs such as DICE are active in standard-
The vast smart city applications not only de- izing security profiles, e.g., Transport Layer
mand large scale deployment of numerous Security (TLS) and Datagram-TLS (DTLS) for
kinds of IoT devices, but also require device in- constraint IoT devices.
teroperability. Therefore, most prominent gov-
erning bodies such as IETF (Internet Engineer-
ing Task Force), 3GPP (3rd Generation Partner- 2.4.2 3GPP
ship Project), ETSI (European Telecommunica- 3GPP in its latest Release 13 standardized
tions Standards Institute), oneM2M, IEEE (In- Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) to provide a better
stitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers),
network coverage for smart city applications by
and OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) are actively further reducing the bandwidth to 200 kHz (up-
involved in developing standards to support link/downlink), reduced throughput on a PRB
smart city applications on a large scale. This (Physical Resource Block) level, supports mas-
section discusses the major contributions and sive IoT devices, low power consumption and
ongoing activities of the prime standard bodiesenhanced coverage extension by 20 dB [10]. Re-
for enabling smart city applications. sultantly, NB-IoT meets the application require-
ments in industrial, public, personal, and home
2.4.1 IETF domains. Additionally, 3GPP is introducing Ex-
The first IETF working group (WG) 6LoWPAN tended Discontinuous Transmission/Reception
standardized techniques for handling IoT small techniques (eDTX/eDRX) in Release 13 to fur-
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE 5

TABLE 1: A summary of major communication protocols for realizing IoT based smart cities [8]
[9].
Technology Operating Data Coverage Latency Power Use cases
frequency rate usage
ZigBee 2.4 GHz 250 Kbps 50-100 m 16 ms Low Smart metering,
868 MHz, 915 MHz Indoor e-healthcare
Bluetooth 2.4 GHz 25 Mbps 10 m 100 ms Low Indoor e-healthcare
Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz 54 Mbps, 140 m 46 ms Medium Metering, waste management
5 GHz, 802.11n 6.75 Gbps 100 m automation, energy management,
infotainment, automation
IEEE 802.11p 5.85-5.925 GHz 6 Mbps 1000 m Low Vehicular communication,
V2V/V2I, infotainment
DSRC/WAVE 5.8, 5.9 GHz 6 Mbps 1000 m 200 µs Low ITS (V2V/V2I)
DASH7 433, 868, 915 MHz 55.5 Kbps, 1000 m 15 ms Low ITS, automation
200 Kbps
6LoWPAN 2.4 GHz, 868, 915 MHz 250 Kbps 100 m Low ITS, smart metering, logistics
LoRaWAN 433, 868, 50 Kbps 2-5 Km Low ITS, smart metering,
780,915 MHz waste management
GSM/GPRS 850, 900, 80-384 Kbps 5-30 Km 1.5-3 s High ITS, smart metering,
1800, 1900 MHz m-health, energy management,
logistics, infotainment
3G 850 MHz 3 Mbps 5-30 Km 100 ms High ITS, smart metering,
energy management, m-health,
logistics, infotainment
LTE/LTE-Advanced 700, 750, 1 Gbps, 5-30 Km 5 ms High ITS, smart metering,
800, 1900, 2500 MHz 500 Mbps mobile health, monitoring,
logistics, infotainment

ther reduce power consumption, thus to in- 2.4.4 IEEE

crease the device operating time.
IEEE in the context of smart cities mainly fo-
cuses on optimization of air interface for ultra-
2.4.3 ETSI IoT deployments. Furthermore, IEEE focuses on
the use of sub-GHz spectrum for IoT connec-
ETSI aims to deliver interoperable and cost- tivity to support numerous smart city applica-
effective solutions to support smart city appli- tions.
cations. Particularly, oneM2M is the global ini-
tiative by ETSI in cooperation with the member
research institutes such as broadband forum, 2.4.5 OMA
OMA and Continua to support IoT connectivity
on a large scale. oneM2M aims to develop a OMA standardized OMA Lightweight M2M
single horizontal platform for enabling inter- (OMALWM2M) protocol for resource con-
operability among all applications through a straint IoT device management for both sensor
distributed software layer3 . Additionally, it de- and cellular networks. OMALWM2M protocol
livers architecture, requirements, Access Point is located at the device end, and offers commu-
Interface (API) specifications, privacy and secu- nication path between a LWM2M client and a
rity solutions as well as interoperability frame- LWM2M server. Therefore, OMALWM2M is a
work for smart city applications. Consequently, light and compact protocol which is frequently
the standardized APIs and open interfaces can used with the Constrained Application Proto-
be used within several systems for enabling col (CoAP), and offers efficient resource data
plethora of IoT devices to connect worldwide model for the resource constraint IoT devices.
with the backend servers. Additionally, it provides a choice for service
providers to deploy IoT systems for supporting
3. oneM2M-TS-0001-V-2014-08 (accessed on: June 5, 2016) corresponding smart city applications.
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE
2.5 Offered Services
IoT offers numerous services which are of great
interest in the context of smart cities to not only
improve the quality of human lives, but also
leverage the city administration by reducing the
operational costs [1]. Major offerings include
smart lighting, waste and water management.
For instance, smart IoT modules can be de-
ployed within grid stations, homes and work-
places for distributing and consuming energy
efficiently. In e-healthcare, IoT devices can be po-
sitioned on the body of patients for monitoring
health parameters such as temperature, pulse
rate, sugar level, and provide opportunities
for doctors to regularly monitor their patients.
Besides, urban IoTs can provide solutions to
control traffic congestion through monitoring
of traffic intensity either using GPS (Global Po-
sitioning System) services in modern vehicles
or using WANs. In waste management, the truck
route can be optimized based on the load level
indication by smart waste containers. Conse-
quently, it enhances the quality of recycling by
reducing the cost of waste collection.
2.6 Requirements
IoT offers diverse applications in a smart city,
thus demands numerous requirements. For in-
stance, IoT-based solutions are expected to
be low cost, low energy consumption, high
Quality-of-Service (QoS), wider coverage, in-
creased flexibility, high security and privacy,
ultra-dense deployments, and multivendor in-
teroperability. To fulfill above requirements,
several new techniques must be adopted. For
instance, traffic modeling can play an essential
role in handling massive IoT traffic. Therefore,
instead of using traditional source traffic mod-
eling approach where each IoT device accesses
the network individually for sending and re-
ceiving important messages, aggregated traffic
modeling approach must be commonly used, as
illustrated in Figure 3. In this way, several IoT
devices can share scarce resources for sending
and receiving small sized data. To achieve this,
a gateway can be deployed which may oper-
ate using any of the existing communication
technologies. For instance, the data from IoT
6
devices can be transported to gateway using
short range communication standards such as
ZigBee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and other DSRC pro-
tocols. In addition, LTE and LTE-A relays and
femto cells can be deployed to perform data
aggregation.
Aggregated traffic modeling can improve
the performance of IoT networks by supporting
enormous number of devices. Since tiny IoT
systems also demand low power consumption
in order to increase device lifetime (upto 10
to 15 years), therefore data aggregation can
be used to ensure low energy consumption
through improved coverage along with the net-
work capacity. This is achieved by improving
the channel conditions using intermediate gate-
ways and relays. Furthermore, provisioning of
QoS is also essential in critical IoT applica-
tions such as e-healthcare and emergency alert-
ing. Therefore, incorporating data differentia-
tion schemes along with the aggregation ap-
proach can potentially fulfill QoS requirements
and satisfy the delay requirements of critical
smart city applications. High priority traffic
(e.g., e-healthcare data) should be served imme-
diately followed by the low priority traffic (e.g.,
regular monitoring). Besides traffic modeling,
ultra-dense IoT realization demands strong col-
laboration among modem manufacturers and
vendors in order to increase interoperability.
Consequently, this will further reduce the as-
sociated cost factors. Besides, data security and
integrity is of significant importance to ensure
safe and secure IoT communications.
3 I OT O PEN S OURCE P LATFORMS
Open source implementations always play a
vital role in for sharing information in order
to achieve multi-vendor interoperability. There
exist worldwide the following prime open com-
munities which offer easy and fast develop-
ment platforms for smart cities.
3.1 FIWARE4
FIWARE is a standard open platform for realiz-
ing smart city applications. It is launched by the
4. http://www.fiware.org/about-us/ (accessed on: October
10, 2016)
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE
Fig. 3: An illustration of traffic modeling for an IoT based smart city.
European commission, and aims to develop the
core future technologies in the IoT paradigm.
It is based on software components named
generic enablers. These components provide
common functionalities to the multiple verti-
cal sectors with the objective of enabling in-
teroperability among them. FIWARE enablers
are classified into seven wide technical cat-
egories, such as cloud hosting, applications,
services and data delivery, security, interface
to networks and devices, advanced web, IoT
services enablement, and data/context man-
agement. Moreover, FIWARE provides a simple
and powerful set of APIs that ease the devel-
opment of smart applications. Despite many
advantages of FIWARE, however, lacking of a
complete set of functionalities is one of the key
issues that remains to be addressed.
7
3.2 OCEAN5
The OCEAN (Open allianCE for iot stANdard)
was initiated in January, 2015 by KETI (Korea
Electronics Technology Institute) and the Ko-
rean government. It is a global alliance that
aims to bring forth open source implemen-
tations for smart cities based on IoT stan-
dards. Additionally, the initiative focuses on
promoting the development and commercial-
ization of platforms, products, and services
by widespread adoption of IoT standards-
compliant open source. OCEAN is responsible
for releasing the source code for IoT standards
as open source and helping vendors and devel-
opers to collaborate with each other to create
new innovative products and services under
the global partnership, finally establishing a
global IoT ecosystem for smart cities. Currently,
5. http://www.iotocean.org/main/ (accessed on: June 5,
2016)
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE 8

OCEAN provides several oneM2M based plat- 3.5 Contiki8

forms for devices, gateways and servers. Contiki is also an open platform which offers
fast and easy development of numerous IoT
based smart city applications. It offers power-
3.3 OM2M6
ful Internet communication to tiny microcon-
The OM2M project is initiated by ECLIPSE trollers and operates with extremely reduced
foundation to deliver an open source imple- cost and low power. Additionally, it fully sup-
mentation of oneM2M and SmartM2M stan- ports standard IPv4 and IPv6 protocols such
dards. The primary goal of this initiative is as UDP (User Datagram Protocol), TCP (Trans-
to support the deployment of vertical appli- mission Control Protocol), and HTTP. Besides,
cations and heterogeneous devices by provid- it offers support of the latest low power wire-
ing a horizontal M2M service platform for de- less and mobile networks such as 6LowPAN,
veloping services independently of the under- CoAP, and RPL multi-hop routing protocol.
lying network. Thus, it provides a horizon- Furthermore, it provides highly efficient mem-
tal Service Common Entity (SCE) which can ory allocation procedures for various smart city
be deployed in an M2M device, a gateway, applications.
or a server. The major SCE functionalities in-
clude application enablement, triggering, no-
tification, security, persistency, inter-working, 4 I OT S YNERGIES AND C ASE S TUDIES
and device management. Additionally, it pro- This section presents a number of case studies
vides RESTful interfaces for authentication, reg- provided by different enterprises along with
istration, resources discovery, containers man- the modern IoT synergies for the realization of
agement, synchronous/asynchronous commu- smart cities. The aim is to provide a summary of
nications, access rights authorization, groups the current deployments and recent initiatives
organization, and re-targeting. of IoT-based solutions to tackle various city-
related issues. A detailed summary of the case
studies and projects is given in Table 2.
3.4 OPEN DAYLIGHT IoT Data Manage-
ment7
4.1 Busan Green u-City9
The IoT-Data-Management (IoTDM) from
Busan Green u-City (ubiquitous city) is the first
OPEN DAYLIGHT (ODL) project is about de-
IoT-enabled smart city in South Korea. It is
veloping a data-centric middleware which will
one of the modern practical examples of IoT-
represent IoT broker compliant with oneM2M.
based smart cities which uses a cloud-based
It will also authorize applications to recover
infrastructure to improve the efficacy of city
data uploaded by any IoT device used in a
management, local business opportunities and
smart city. The ODL platform is used to im-
improves the quality of human lives. It is a
plement the oneM2M data store which mod-
public-private cooperation among the Busan
els a hierarchical containment tree, where each
city government, major technology suppliers,
node in the tree represents oneM2M resource.
Cisco and South Koreas largest telco, KT with
Typically, IoT devices and applications interact
an approximate investment of 452 million USD.
with the resource tree over standard protocols
The primary objective of this cooperation is to
such as CoAP, MQTT (Message Queue Teleme-
deliver an improved transportation system, e-
try Transport), and HTTP (Hyper-Text Transfer
healthcare services, increased jobs and business
Protocol).
8. http://www.contiki-os.org/ (accessed on: October 10,
6. http://www.eclipse.org/om2m/ (accessed on: June 5, 2016)
2016) 9. http://www.gsma.com/connectedliving/busan-green-
7. https://www.opendaylight.org/ (accessed on: June 5, u-city-a-successful-example-of-a-smart-city-in-south-korea/
2016) (accessed on: April 15, 2016)
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE 9

TABLE 2: A comparison of case studies.

City Country Population Solutions Major partners
Busan South Korea 3.4 million Safety service for Busan government, Cisco,
childrens/elderly, drone based ETRI, KETI, SK telecom, KT
smart marine, smart parking,
crosswalk and energy usage
Santander Spain 0.1 million Smart metering of temperature, Ericsson, Telefonica,
traffic intensity, humidity, Telefonica I+D
transportation plans, water needs, etc.
Chicago USA 2.7 million Smart grid, smart Cisco, IBM,
living, emergency alerting, reduced Chicago government
crimes
Milton UK 0.2 million Smart transportation, reduced corbon Milton Keynes council,
Keynes emission, smart energy, water Samsung, Huawei, CATAPULT,
management Cambridge University

opportunities and an improved information ac- Chicago deployed around 300,000 smart IoT
cessibility through various devices and commu- devices to support smart grid operations. The
nication sources. primary objective of this project is to reduce en-
ergy waste to save customers 170 million USD.
4.2 Smart Santander10 The project developed an analytics platform on
Cisco technology which has helped to minimize
Santander, the Spanish city is widely recog- crime rates in the city. Thus, a model is created
nized as an IoT-based smart city. This Future that has more than 31 variables to predict and
Internet Award winning project is a cooperation prevent rodent infestations. Analytics is also
of 15 big companies and institutions including incorporated to identify buildings which are
Ericsson, Telefonica, and several universities anticipated to become vacant. Numerous Apps
and research groups in Spain, Greece, Ger- are built using 600 data sets of open city portal
many, Denmark, UK, and Australia. The city to notify citizens about several unwanted situ-
is equipped with approximately 20,000 smart ations expected within a territory.
IoT devices which perform several intelligent
tasks such as measurement of temperature, hu-
midity, speed and position of vehicles, traffic 12
intensity, information on public transportation 4.4 Milton Keynes
conditions and timetables, air quality, and wa- Milton Keynes Smart project is coordinated by
ter networks. The acquired sensor data is trans- the Open University that aims to develop a data
mitted to Munoz’s laboratory which is com- hub within the city which collects and manages
piled into a big picture by a central computer. data received from several smart devices. The
Thus, everything is recorded in this digital city project emphasizes to control corbon emissions
Santander. and support sustainable growth without de-
ploying additional infrastructure. The project is
4.3 Chicago11 collaborated by Samsung, Huawei, CATAPULT,
The project focuses on infrastructure manage- and Cambridge University that aims to bring
ment, economic development and community forth innovatory solutions against the afore-
engagement to tackle major issues of educa- mentioned issues. Besides, the project aims to
tion, economic development, crime and trans- deliver efficient transportation system, water
port in Chicago, US. In cooperation with IBM, usage, smart energy solutions as well as fo-
cuses on business, education, and community
10. http://www.smartsantander.eu/ (accessed on: April 01, engagement activities.
2016)
11. http://www.smartchicagocollaborative.org/category/city-
of-chicago/ (accessed on: June 04, 2016) 12. http://www.mksmart.org/ (accessed on: May 01, 2016)
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE 10

5 O PEN R ESEARCH C HALLENGES each other for the exchange of important infor-
Besides aforementioned advancements, there mation. Smart cities include IoT devices from a
exists several open research issues and chal- diverse range of domains, e.g., smart metering,
lenges in adopting IoT for smart cities. The e-healthcare, logistics, monitoring, and intelli-
purpose of discussing these challenges is to gent transport. In a smart city, Interoperabil-
give research directions to new researchers in ity plays a vital role to provide connectivity
this domain. Table 3 summarizes the future among devices operating with different com-
research directions along with their advantages munication technologies. For example, smart
and requirements. metering uses WLAN technologies as the un-
derlaying communication protocols while the
intelligent transportation systems mainly uti-
5.1 Security, Privacy and Trust lize DSRC and mobile technologies for commu-
Security in general is required for every IoT nication. According to World Economic Forum,
device. As smart cities provide Internet con- interoperability between devices from different
nectivity to ample variety of devices, security domains is a major barrier in IoT success due to
becomes a very critical challenge. According to lack of universal standards [14]. To unlock this
HP, about 70% IoT devices in a smart city were barrier, interoperability issues should be iden-
at risks of attacks due to sufficient vulnerabil- tified at different levels e.g., device, network,
ities such as insufficient authorization, inade- communication, application and platform. To
quate software protections and weak encrypted address these issues, an intelligent and holistic
communication protocols [11]. These vulner- approach is required to provide connectivity to
abilities instigate various threats and attacks, billion of IoT devices. For instance, standardiza-
leading to several issues in terms of security tion of oneM2M and FIWARE is a major step in
and privacy. In order to design a successful overcoming the interoperability issues with the
IoT-based smart city, following issues must be collaboration of world’s largest standardization
addressed aforementioned. bodies such as ETSI, 3GPP, and OMA.
1) To provide privacy-aware communication
for user data. 5.3 Low Power and Low Cost Communica-
2) Simple, light weight and efficient secu- tion
rity solutions should be designed to en- Usually, IoT devices are small in nature and
sure data authenticity, integrity and to pro- equipped with a group of sensors. In order to
vide secure communication between IoT operate these devices, a continuous source of
devices and cloud-based application center energy is constantly required which poses a
[12]. significant challenge in terms of battery life and
3) Detailed risk assessment to identify cost. To address these issues in IoT-based smart
present and newly emerging attacks based cities, the devices must feature low power con-
on the vulnerabilities and threats. One such sumption at very low cost. This can be achieved
risk assessment framework is proposed by through advancements in the domain of wire-
ENISA which identifies possible emerging less communication and micro-electronics.
attacks in ITS [13].
4) To design an active and adequate decen-
5.4 Big Data Analytics
tralised trust management system.
5) To ensure user’s trust and consent by pro- Big data analytics is one of the major research
viding strong privacy measures. direction in IoT-based smart cities paradigm
[15]. Smart cities connecting billions of devices
will provide a massive amount of information
5.2 Interoperability and data for analysis. This data can include
Interoperability is the capability of two differ- information from surrounding environments
ent devices and networks to communicate with (ITS) and user private data (smart hospitals). To
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE 11

TABLE 3: Future Research Challenges

Feature Applications Advantages
Security ITS, e-healthcare, Secure attack-free
Smart Schools, execution environment
Logistics to deploy services
Privacy ITS, e-healthcare Provides data protection
and user privacy
in the network
Trust ITS, e-healthcare Ensures users to
belief and trust that
the desired services are free
from vulnerabilities
Risk ITS, indoor Ensure security by
Management e-healthcare identifying uncertain events
and threats in the IoT
network
Interoperability ITS, smart home, Provides platform
Personal e-health for two IoT devices
ecosystem from different domains
to communicate
Low Power and ITS, Smart Provides wide range
Low Cost Meters, e-healthcare of applications
Communication in IoT-based smart
cities if communication
is of low cost
Big Data Smart meters, Increase IoT network
ITS, e-healthcare performance by processing
useful information
identified by
authenticated sources. E.g,
analysing traffic data can
reduce traffic congestion
Connectivity ITS, waste manage-, Ensures IoT devices
ment, e-healthcare, to communicate from
smart industry various domains
Research Challenges
1) Lack of standardized secu-
-rity solutions without
hindering data integrity
2) Secure deployment and
integration of cloud based
services at the device and
network level
3) Efficient early identifi-
-cation of both insider and
outsider threats
Ensuring user’s anonymity
in the IoT network for
using particular services
1) Efficient decentralized
trust management system
2) Intelligent trust evalua-
-tion during service
unavailability and compro-
-mised IoT network
1) Low cost and efficient
risk management systems
to identify newly emerged
and attacks effectively
2) Fast and ultra-efficient
risk decision mechanisms
to counter identified threats
Integrating devices for vendor
locked-in services
How to prolong the battery life
of the IoT devices?
1) Lack of appropriate tools
to handle the massively
generated information
2) Protection to users privacy
and security
3) Efficient centralized data
acquisition and information
processing
How to ensure connectivity in
wide range of IoT devices during
no communication network
and high mobility?
Major Requirements
Identification of vulnerabilities
in the network which serves
as weak entry points for
various attacks
Pervasive network model
with strong encryption
and cryptographic tools
Decentralized trust model
avoiding single point failure
in the network
1) Detailed threat modeling
to identify various threats
in the network
2) Identify various risks areas
through threat actors and asset
based threat modelling
Generic, centralised, flexible
and open reference models
for devices to integrate and
communicate e.g., IP, CoAP
Advancements in micro-elec-
tronics and wireless communi-
cation to provide low cost
communication and increasing
battery life
1) Centralised big data process-
-ing centers
2) Public awareness to utilise
resources in the IoT network
safely
1) Efficient usage of spectrum
for IoT devices to communicate
2) Intelligent usage of every pos-
sible communication medium, e.g.,
WLAN, 3G, LTE, WiMAX
3) Development of gossip based
algorithms to provide connectivity
to IoT devices in absence of
communication network

analyze this data, intelligent techniques and al-
gorithms are required. For instance, deep learn-
ing algorithms can be adopted to efficiently an-
alyze immense information produced by locally
connected devices. The major issues need to be
addressed are:
1) To respect the user privacy during the data
analysis.
2) To provide data anonymity for sensitive
data.
3) To provide infrastructure to collect, store
and analyze the huge amount of data.
4) To provide required computation power to
extract new knowledge from the data.
5.5 Connectivity in IoT
IoT-based smart city includes billions of devices
in the network. The concept of smart cities can
succeed only if it has the ability to provide
connectivity to every available IoT device with
sensing capabilities which produce significant
information. In smart cities, the IoT devices
can use any available communication networks
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE
such as public Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular net-
works (LTE/LTE-Advanced) and satellites to
communicate with the cloud-based application
center. However, ensuring connectivity in smart
cities poses several challenges such as:
1) Providing connectivity to devices with
high mobility, e.g., high speed trains and
vehicles.
2) Connectivity transition from device to net-
work level and vice versa.
3) Ensuring connectivity to massively de-
ployed devices in the absence of commu-
nication networks.
6 C ONCLUSIONS
This paper has presented recent trends and
advancements in IoT enabled smart cities
paradigm. We devised a taxonomy for IoT
based smart cities based on communication
protocols, major service providers, network
types, standard bodies and major service re-
quirements for the understanding of the reader.
Based on the conducted study, we concluded
that smart city applications rely on several
wireless technologies such as IEEE 802.11p,
WAVE, SIGFOX, 6LoWPAN, LTE/LTE-A. Fur-
thermore, we studied major open IoT platforms
for the ease of researchers. In addition, a num-
ber of reported case studies of several newest
IoT deployments and research projects are pre-
sented to reveal an increasing trend of IoT de-
ployments. In the end, we unearth several open
research issues such as multi-vendor interoper-
ability, low cost, low power consumption and
security which demand considerable attentions
from our research community.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We especially thank late Prof. Dr. Carmelita
Görg, former head of ComNets, University of
Bremen for all her support and guidance. Fur-
thermore, we thank the International Graduate
School for Dynamics in Logistics (IGS), doctoral
training group of LogDynamics, University of
Bremen, Germany for the financial support of
this work.
12
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IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE
Yasir Mehmood was born in Abbottabad,
a town in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pak-
istan. He completed his Masters in Elec-
PLACE trical (Telecommunications) Engineering
PHOTO from the Military College of Signals (MCS),
HERE National University of Science and Tech-
nology (NUST) Islamabad, Pakistan. He is
currently a doctoral researcher at the Sus-
tainable Communication Networks (Com-
Nets) research group, University of Bremen, Germany, in the
framework of International Graduate School (IGS) for Dynamic
in Logistics (a doctoral training group at the University of
Bremen). His major research area includes cellular communi-
cations, mobile M2M communications and cellular Internet-of
Things (C-IoT).
Farhan Ahmad received his B.Sc. de-
gree in Electronics Engineering from COM-
SATS Institute of Information Technology,
PLACE Abbottabad, Pakistan, and M.Sc. degree in
PHOTO Communication and Information Technol-
HERE ogy from University of Bremen, Germany,
in 2009 and 2014, respectively. He is cur-
rently a final year PhD student in Computer
Science and Post-Graduate Teaching As-
sistant (PGTA) at the College of Engineering and Technology,
University of Derby, UK. His research focuses on cyber security,
risk-assessment and trust in Vehicular Networks, M2M commu-
nications and Internet-of-Things.
Ibrar Yaqoob received BS (Hons.) degree
in Information Technology from the Uni-
versity of the Punjab, Gujranwala campus,
PLACE Pakistan in 2012. Currently, he is pursuing
PHOTO his Ph.D. degree in computer science at
HERE the University of Malaya, Malaysia since
November 2013. He won the scholarship
for his Ph.D. and also working as a Bright
Spark Program research assistant. He has
published a number of research articles in refereed international
journals and magazines . His numerous research articles are
very famous and most downloaded in top journals. His research
interests include Big Data, Mobile Cloud, Internet of Things,
Cloud Computing, and Wireless Networks.
13
Asma Adnane joined the University of
Derby, UK as a full-time Senior Lecturer in
Networks and Security from the University
PLACE of Leicester, UK where she was a Knowl-
PHOTO edge Transfer Partnership (KTP) associate
HERE with CrowdLab as their database and secu-
rity expert. Asma received her PhD in Com-
puter Science from University of Rennes,
France. She has published several papers
in renowned conferences and journals focusing on ad-hoc net-
work security and trust management. She also worked as Re-
search Associate/Lecturer in France at the University of Rennes,
University of Nantes, and ENSI-Bourges. Her research inter-
ests include trust management in Intelligent Transport Systems,
Smart Cities and Network Security.
Muhammad Imran is working as Assistant
Professor in the College of Computer and
Information Sciences, King Saud Univer-
PLACE sity (KSU) since 2011. He worked as a
PHOTO Postdoctoral Associate on joint research
HERE projects between KSU and University of
Sydney, Australia. He is a Visiting Scien-
tist with Iowa State University, USA. His
research interest includes mobile ad hoc
and sensor networks, WBANs, M2M, IoT, SDN, fault tolerant
computing and Security and privacy. He has published number
of research papers in refereed international conferences and
journals. His research is financially supported by several grants.
Recently, European Alliance for Innovation (EAI) has appointed
him as a Co-Editor in Chief for EAI Transactions on Pervasive
Health and Technology. He also serves as an associate editor
for IEEE Access, IEEE Communications Magazine, Wireless
Communication and Mobile Computing Journal (SCIE, Wiley),
Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless Networks Journal (SCIE), IET Wire-
less Sensor Systems, International Journal of Autonomous and
Adaptive Communication Systems (Inderscience) and Interna-
tional Journal of Information Technology and Electrical Engi-
neering. He served/serving as a guest editor for IEEE Communi-
cations Magazine (SCIE), Computer Networks (SCIE, Elsevier),
MDPI Sensors (SCIE), International Journal of Distributed Sen-
sor Networks (SCIE, Hindawi), Journal of Internet Technology
(SCIE), and International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive
Communications Systems. He has been involved in more than
fifty conferences and workshops in various capacities such as
a chair, co-chair and technical program committee member.
These include IEEE ICC, Globecom, AINA, LCN, IWCMC, IFIP
WWIC and BWCCA. He has received number of awards such
as Asia Pacific Advanced Network fellowship.
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE
Sghaier Guizani received his Ph. D
degree from the University of Quebec,
Canada, in 2007. He is currently an assis-
PLACE tant professor in the Electrical Engineering
PHOTO Department at Alfaisal University, Riyadh,
HERE Saudi Arabia. His research interests in-
clude communication networks and secu-
rity (particularly wireless ad hoc, sensor
networks, QoS, wireless sensor network
security, and RFID/ NFC application and security) and the
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14
Internet of things. He has published a number of research
papers in refereed international conferences and journals. He
has served/is serving as an Associate Editor for Security and
Communication Networks (Wiley), the International Journal of
Sensor Networks (Inderscience), and the Journal of Computer
Systems, Networking, and Communications. He has been in-
volved in a number of conferences and workshops in various
capacities.