Object tracking sensor networks in smart cities: Taxonomy, architecture, applications, research challenges and future directions

Abstract

The development of pervasive communication devices and the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) have acted as an essential part in the feasibility of smart city initiatives. Wireless sensor network (WSN) as a key enabling technology in IoT offers the potential for cities to get smatter. WSNs gained tremendous attention during the recent years because of their rising number of applications that enables remote monitoring and tracking in smart cities. One of the most exciting applications of WSNs in smart cities is detection, monitoring, and tracking which is referred to as object tracking sensor networks (OTSN). The adaptation of OTSN into urban cities brought new exciting challenges for reaching the goal of future smart cities. Such challenges focus primarily on problems related to active monitoring and tracking in smart cities. In this paper, we present the essential characteristics of OTSN, monitoring and tracking application used with the content of smart city. Moreover, we discussed the taxonomy of OTSN along with analysis and comparison. Furthermore, research challenges are investigated concerning energy reservation, object detection, object speed, accuracy in tracking, sensor node collaboration, data aggregation and object recovery position estimation. This review can serve as a benchmark for researchers for future development of smart cities in the context of OTSN. Lastly, we provide future research direction. Highlights One of the most interesting applications of wireless sensor networks in smart cities would be detecting and monitoring or tracking of objects based on object tracking sensor networks (OTSN).  The review delineates the advantages as well as the weakness of existing OTSN and conduct a comparative view.  Furthermore, research challenges in OTSNs and existing methods are investigated with a focal point of energy constraints, object detection, object speed, tracking accuracy, sensor node collaboration, data aggregation and object recovery position estimation in WSN and smart cities.  Open research issues that required further improvement are summarized.

Enabling Technologies for Urban Smart Mobility: Recent Trends, Opportunities and Challenges

“…The governance issues in smart mobility services, including consent-based data capturing, manipulations and usage, data integration and standardization challenges, were covered in [ 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ]. The importance of sensor characteristics for sensing and capturing the data about the subject and its surroundings plays a vital role in developing effective and intelligent mobility initiatives [ 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 ]. The impact of external environments on the performance of the sensors is an essential field of study, as discussed in [ 56 , 57 ].…”

Distributed Architecture to Integrate Sensor Information: Object Recognition for Smart Cities

“…Smart city architectures based on the ubiquitous computing, Industry 4.0, or IoT paradigms need to decide which components have to be placed in the cloud, the fog, or the edge. In [28], a cloud-based architecture has been presented. In this case, some of the data is processed in the cloud-computing infrastructure, while the edge handles the rest.…”

Block-Chain Technology -Security, Platforms

“…Peer-to-Peer platforms for resource sharing represent often discusses field of application for "trust-free" blockchain technology. However, It is the trust between peers which plays an important role in nearly all sharing economy interactions [25].…”