Meeting citizens' requirements economically and efficiently is the most important objective of Smart Cities. As a matter of fact, they are considered a key concept both for future Internet and information and communications technology. It is expected that a wide range of services will be made available for residential users (e.g. intelligent transportation systems, e-government, e-banking, e-commerce and smart management of energy demand), public administration entities, public safety and civil protection agencies and so on with increased quality, lower costs and reduced environmental impact. In order to achieve these ambitious objectives, new technologies should be developed such as non-invasive sensing, highly parallel processing, smart grids and mobile broadband communications. This paper considers the communication aspects of Smart City applications, specifically, the role of the latest developments of Long-Term Evolution-Advanced standard, which forecast the increase of broadband coverage by means of small cells. We shall demonstrate that the novel concept of small cell fully meets the emerging communication and networking requirements of future Smart Cities. To this aim, a feasible network architecture for future Smart Cities, based on small cells, will be discussed in the framework of a future smarter and user-centric perspective of forthcoming 4G mobile technologies.
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications are gaining momentum due to the rapid deployment of smart devices with self-organizing capabilities, able to interact each other without the human operator support. Ultimately, M2M paradigm allows Machine-Type Communication Devices (MTCD) to exchange data in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) mode, avoiding the need of a core network handling end-to-end communication establishment between two machines. To this end, the recent Device-to-Device (D2D) feature, introduced by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 12, fosters new types of service based on the device proximity concept and helps to offload cellular networks by enabling direct-mode communications among cellular users. Furthermore, D2D is also considered a suitable technology to fully support M2M communications thanks to the reduced power consumption and the hop gain.In this paper we first review crucial aspects of M2M communications and examine major issues involving terminals operating in D2D mode in LTE-A networks. Then, a multi-hop D2D communication scheme is proposed in order to enhance endto-end connectivity among devices in a proximity area within an LTE-A cell. We also describe a promising resource allocation approach aware of the multi-hop D2D network configuration, able to fulfil bandwidth requests of all the cooperating devices, according to the related role in the network set-up.
Abstract-Internet of Things offers a wide spectrum of opportunities for innovative applications designed to improve our life quality. In the energy sector, the developing of smart metering networks allows operators and companies to improve the production efficiency and to offer an enhanced service to customers. 3GPP introduced in Release 13 Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) as a new cellular technology for providing wide-area coverage for Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Type Communication (MTC). In this paper, we propose a deployment analysis of a NB-IoT system for smart metering. Estimated number of UE that this system can serve and coverage enhancement considerations with respect to LTE technology are provided.
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