Applications of Integrated IoT-Fog-Cloud Systems to Smart Cities: A Survey

Abstract

Several cities have recently moved towards becoming smart cities for better services and quality of life for residents and visitors, with: optimized resource utilization; increased environmental protection; enhanced infrastructure operations and maintenance; and strong safety and security measures. Smart cities depend on deploying current and new technologies and different optimization methods to enhance services and performance in their different sectors. Some of the technologies assisting smart city applications are the Internet of Things (IoT), fog computing, and cloud computing. Integrating these three to serve one system (we will refer to it as integrated IoT-fog-cloud system (iIFC)) creates an advanced platform to develop and operate various types of smart city applications. This platform will allow applications to use the best features from the IoT devices, fog nodes, and cloud services to deliver best capabilities and performance. Utilizing this powerful platform will provide many opportunities for enhancing and optimizing applications in energy, transportation, healthcare, and other areas. In this paper we survey various applications of iIFCs for smart cities. We identify different common issues associated with utilizing iIFCs for smart city applications. These issues arise due to the characteristics of iIFCs on the one side and the requirements of different smart city applications on the other. In addition, we outline the main requirements to effectively utilize iIFCs for smart city applications. These requirements are related to optimization, networking, and security.