ABSTRACT
The Internet of things (IoT) and the technology around machine-to-machine (M2M) communications [1] are seeing fast adoption, with growth taking place at a breathtaking pace, from two billion objects connected to the Internet in 2006 to a projected 50 billion by 2020. The main goal is the seamless wireless (or wired) connection of a massive amount of smart devices through unique schemes such that they cover a wide range of applications, like smart cities, smart health, smart monitoring, and smart mobility. Smart cities, for example, is an urban development vision to integrate and leverage multiple information and communication technology solutions in a secure fashion to manage city assets, such as local departments’ information systems, transportation systems, hospitals, water supply networks, waste management, and law enforcement. The main goal is to drive competitiveness, sustainability, economic growth, energy efficiency, and to improve citizens’ healthcare and, in general, their quality of life. The successful deployment of smart cities calls for a unified ICT infrastructure to support the heterogeneous set of applications for urban development. The great majority of these devices used the standard wireless sensor and actuator networking (WSAN) technology based on IEEE 802.15.4. However, IoT-based applications require the adoption of more advanced communication technologies, such as 4G/long-term evolution (LTE), which are capable of providing services of higher quality.
