STEM‐Net: an evolutionary network architecture for smart and sustainable cities

Abstract

The concept of smart city has emerged worldwide as a feasible answer to the challenges raised by the increasing urbanisation. From the technological point of view, guaranteeing ubiquitous connectivity, reliable communications and seamless integration of multiple network access technologies are mandatory in a smart city. This is in contrast with the current infrastructure deployment in several urban areas, which is characterised by lack of ubiquitous connectivity and coverage and by fragmentation of networks that are usually deployed by different operators and without any centralised control by the city authorities. In this paper, we look at the heterogeneity of devices and network technologies under a different perspective by not perceiving it as a limitation but as a potential to increase the connectivity in a smart city. We propose a new generation of network nodes, called stem nodes, based on the innovative idea of 'stemness', which pushes forward the well-known self-configuration and self-management concepts towards the idea of node mutation and evolution. We also deployed prototypes that demonstrate the stem-node architecture and basic operations in different hardware platforms of common communication devices (an Alix-based router, a laptop and a smartphone).

Priority-Based Content Delivery in the Internet of Vehicles through Named Data Networking

“…The aforementioned taxonomy of applications is too ossified for the IoV, which is expected to encompass novel applications specifically emerging with vehicles becoming multi-faceted elements (equipped with cameras, sensors [15], radars, storage, processing [4] and positioning capabilities [16,17]) of smart and connected cities able to interact also with nearby/remote people and objects [18,19].…”

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications for smart cities

“…There are several new constituents emerging in the technology landscape of cities today [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Notably, cities start to roll out smart city "operating systems" or data platforms that rely on the input of data from sensors deployed in the field; data gathered from people via, for example, social media; or data taken from the Internet at large.…”

“…Achieving grow-beyond-organic growth rates has three dimensions today: (1) a political dimension, calling for an establishment of smart city departments; (2) establishment of transversal and interoperable technological platforms to manage the huge amounts of data generated; and (3) a financial dimension, calling for a coherent self-sustainable business model [9]. Achieving grow-beyond-organic growth rates has three dimensions today: (1) a political dimension, calling for an establishment of smart city departments; (2) establishment of transversal and interoperable technological platforms to manage the huge amounts of data generated; and (3) a financial dimension, calling for a coherent self-sustainable business model [9].…”

Spontaneous smartphone networks as a user-centric solution for the future internet

“…The first approach allows the problem of intermittent connectivity caused by end-user mobility to be faced, although it poses severe challenges in terms of performance and battery consumption [4]. The second approach relies on traditional routing protocols used over generic MANET; we cite experimental studies of multihop SSNs using Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) [2] and Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) [5] protocols. Since most of the MOSs do not allow the interception of IP packets or modification of the routing tables at the kernel layer, these implementations run in user space [5], thus introducing additional overhead …”

“…In this work, we present and discuss results of a novel framework named STEM-Net [2] specifically adapted to SSNs, in order to provide two main enabling features for users' devices: • Network self-configuration • Evolvability, that is, the capacity of continuously adapting to the needs of both users and networks Through STEM-Net, a smartphone can switch between different roles. It can produce/receive data, forward the traffic of other terminals through multihop communications, or provide access to global network resources to other terminals; but above all, it can autonomously assume the most suitable role without any user intervention.…”