A Thorough Review and Comparison of Commercial and Open-Source IoT Platforms for Smart City Applications

Abstract

In this paper, we conducted a state-of-the-art survey on the current state of IoT platforms suitable for the development of smart city (SC) applications. Both commercial and open-source IoT platforms are presented and compared, addressing various significant aspects and characteristics of SC applications, such as connectivity, communication protocols, dashboards/analytics availability, security, etc. The characteristics of all the investigated platforms were aggregated so that useful outcomes regarding the technological trends of the IoT platforms could be derived. Furthermore, an attempt was made to identify any discrepancies between the needs of smart cities and the capabilities provided by the relevant platforms. Moreover, IoT platforms referring to the domains of industry, agriculture, and asset tracking were also included, alongside platforms that purely target smart cities, as parts of them are also applicable to smart city applications. The results of the comparison proved that there is a lack of open-source IoT platforms targeted at smart cities, which impedes the development and testing of connected smart city applications for researchers.