Enabling Technologies for Smart Cities

INTERNET OF THINGS DIVISION

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Disclaimer

The information contained is mostly compiled from different sources and no claim is being made for it
being original. Every care has been taken to provide the correct and up to date information along with
references thereof. However, neither TEC nor the authors shall be liable for any loss or damage
whatsoever, including incidental or consequential loss or damage, arising out of, or in connection with
any use of or reliance on the information in this document. In case of any doubt or query, readers are
requested to refer to the detailed relevant documents.

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Content

1. INTRODUCTION

2. APPLICATIONS OF SMART CITIES AND THE ENABLING ICT TRENDS

2.1 OVERVIEW OF SMART CITIES APPLICATIONS AND FEATURES
2.2 SMART CITIES INFRASTRUCTURES AND ROLE OF ICT

3. ICT REQUIREMENTS IN SMART CITIES

4. ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
4.1 WIRED TECHNOLOGIES
4.2 WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES
4.2.1 OVERVIEW
4.2.2 NEW WAVE OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES
4.2.2.1 OVERVIEW
4.2.2.2 VARIOUS TECHNOLOGIES FOR PAN/NAN/BAN
4.2.2.3 LPWAN

5. CONCLUSION

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1. Introduction
The world population has grown exponentially at an average rate of 1.2% per year in the last 50 years. In
2007, for the first time ever, the number of people living in cities surpassed the number of people living
in rural areas. Furthermore, it is estimated that the proportion will exceed 70% by 2050. According to
the UN World Economic and Social Survey for 2013, Africa, Asia, and other developing regions will be
housing an estimate of 80% of the world's urban population in the coming years. The world’s big cities
will pose our greatest challenge—and greatest opportunity.

But today, cities waste an estimated $39 billion in water, gas and energy resources. As demands on
resources and infrastructure grow, how will cities provide energy, water, transportation and other
critical services for so many people? [1]

The Internet of Things (IoT) is making it possible to make cities greener, safer and more efficient. By
connecting devices, vehicles and infrastructure everywhere in a city, governments and their partners
can reduce energy and water consumption, keep people moving efficiently, and improve safety and
quality of life.

In smart cities, many different stakeholders must work together to provide the best technology
solutions. Network operators, managed service providers, system integrators and technology providers
all have a role to play in working with governments to enable smart city solutions. The key is building
these solutions on an open, standards-based communications platform that can be continually re-used
and re-imagined for new services, insights, and applications. [2]

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[1] The Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (DESA). World
Economic and Social Survey 2013‐Sustainable Development Challenges. Annual report,
E/2013/50/Rev. 1 (ST/ESA/344). 2013

[2] https://www.sierrawireless.com/applications/smart-cities/

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2. Applications of smart cities and the enabling ICT [3]
2.1. OVERVIEW OF SMART CITIES APPLICATIONS AND FEATURES
Nowadays, there are more sources of innovation available in the world than ever before. By using the
accumulated progress and improvements in ICT during the last decades, the smart city will provide
relevant scenarios of livability for citizens with the necessary quality and simplicity in urban areas.

A further purpose of the smart cities could be also to drive economic growth and area‐based
development in order to build a clean and sustainable environment, enhance incomes for all, support
disadvantaged persons, or to make the governance of the city more transparent. If so, smart cities’
paradigms should extend and/or radically transform our traditional infrastructure by bringing together
innovation, reliability, mobility across the city, and easiness of daily services in the urban spaces.

As depicted in Table 1, smart city applications are then a mesh of technologies services and a
combination of many vertical smart solutions deployment in different locations and over many domains,
such as health care, logistics, commercial and industrial networking, security and surveillance,
transportation and mobility, education.
2.2. SMART CITIES INFRASTRUCTURES AND ROLE OF ICT
Setting up a smart city is more than improving the old system with technology by simply adding sensors,
remote supervision, and control to essential city services. It should be a complete shift of a paradigm in
daily life when using new technologies, especially new ICT leading to smart outcomes. If that is the case,
some major questions must be asked about the adoption of any transformation strategy to retrofit
smart city ideas into the existing city: What are particular opportunities and threats on the existing
infrastructure and services? How to redesign and integrate ICT in a smart way? How to manage the risk
of growing volumes of all the gathered information? How could that transform and automate
information usage in business processes? How to use ICT to enhance the quality of life and to better
engage residents to such integrated vision for the improvement?

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[3] http://www.intechopen.com/books/smart-cities-technologies/

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TABLE 1
Main applications related to infrastructures of smart cities.

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Certainly, answers will be different in every case as there is no unique and generic approach for a simple step‐
by‐step procedure in building smart cities using ICT. As a result, we typically start by the modeling of the
smart cities. Since many possible solutions exist, there are discussions about the main pillars building the city,
after that the smartness may be checked in each pillar of the city. Without loss of generality, the main common
four pillars building the city in the literature are economy, governance, environment, and society. These are
reflected via three overarching dimensions of a city: environment and sustainability, city level services, and
quality of life. Each of these dimensions has multiple characterizing attributes, sometimes overlapping.
Sustainability and environment are critical to the urban landscape since cities represent 75% of energy
consumption and 80% of CO2 emissions on a global basis. The primary attributes in this dimension include
infrastructure and governance, energy and climate change, pollution, waste, social, economic, and health
aspects. As for city level services, the key attributes include technology and infrastructure (e.g., transportation,
buildings, health care), sustainability (e.g., water, air, waste), governance (e.g., organization, administration,
and leadership) and economy (e.g., financial, human capital, economic strength). The final dimension is the
quality of life of the citizens. This reflects how the inhabitants of a city perceive their own sense of well‐being
and the fact that they are constantly striving to better themselves—for example, in terms of wealth, health, and
education. All of the above need to be balanced for a successful smart sustainable city.

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FIGURE 1
Core field components of sustainable smart cities and position of ICTs.

Infrastructure is a pivotal aspect of a smart sustainable city. Traditionally, there have been two types of
infrastructure: physical (e.g., buildings, roads, transportation, and power plants) and digital (information
technology (IT) and communications infrastructure). There is also a service infrastructure, providing

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services run on top of the physical infrastructure (e.g., education, health care, e‐government). The
digital infrastructure provides the glue enabling the smart sustainable city to operate efficiently in an
optimal way.

ICT has a crucial role in SSC since it acts as the platform to collect and aggregate information and data
from the field to help enabling an improved understanding on how the city is functioning in terms of
resources consumption, services, and lifestyles, as illustrated in Figure 1. ICT also enable the following
functions, which are keys to achieving the goals and maximizing the performance of smart city:

 ICT‐enabled information and knowledge sharing: Traditionally, due to inefficiency on information

sharing, a city may not be ready to solve a problem even if it is well equipped to respond. With
immediate and accurate information, cities can gain an insight on the problem and take actions
before it escalates.

 ICT‐enabled forecasts: Preparing for stressors like natural disasters requires a considerable amount
of data dedicated to study patterns, identify trends, recognize risk areas, and predict potential
problems. ICT provides and manages this information more efficiently, so that the city can improve
its preparedness and response capability.

 ICT‐enabled integration: Access to timely and relevant information (e.g., ICT‐based early warning
systems) need to be ensured in order to better understand the city's vulnerabilities and strengths.

3. ICT REQUIREMENTS IN SMART CITIES [4]

As stated before, the ICT infrastructure plays a critical role as the central nerve of the smart city, by
connecting and coordinating all the different interactions between the pillars and the infrastructure
elements. It is an essential ingredient, since it acts as the “glue” that integrates all the other elements of
the smart city in the form of a foundational platform that is present in all interactions of smart
city components, either in form of human‐to‐human, human‐to‐machine, or machine‐to‐machine
communication.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[4] http://www.intechopen.com/books/smart-cities-technologies/

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Therefore, the ICT platform must respect a set of requirements in order to accomplish the desired tasks
without becoming a cause of malfunctions and constraints of daily activities in the city. The most
important requirements are the following:

 Cost‐effectiveness: Sensors or metering points, like smart metering communications

technologies that will be deployed on a massive scale must be designed to minimize those costs
and provide excellent value. The costs‐effectiveness of the communication infrastructure should
cover all three aspects: capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operations expenditures (OPEX), such
as low energy consumption and long battery lifetime, minimal infrastructure, low HW/SW
equipment costs and low installation costs and low maintenance.

 High reliability and long lifetime: Communications equipment and modules could be placed
in different environment depending on the application. By taking the example of smart grid,
smart meters and the communications technologies supporting them should be able to stay
online for 10, 15, or even 20 years without requiring the components to be replaced or directly
maintained. Therefore, metering communications technologies must be highly reliable and
designed with industrial‐grade specifications to meet extreme environmental conditions of
shock, corrosion, temperature, vibration, humidity, and interferences with other equipment and
machines in the deployment environment. A negative example of low‐reliable communication
solution is power line communications (PLCs), which performances are fluctuating according to
activities and machines connected to the electricity installations. Generally, business cases for
utility solutions are often based with a 20 years life span for meters, while telecommunication
solutions are moving every 2 years. So utilities have a challenge to operate, maintain, and
manage the communication infrastructure over a so long time span.

 Network security: When two‐way command and control systems are embedded into
energy management systems, several security threats must be addressed. Generally, security
needs to be guaranteed: confidentiality of data, which only allows authorized entities to access
the data; integrity of data, which assures that data are not manipulated; authenticity of data,
which guarantees that the data are sent by a dedicated entity; and availability of data,
guaranteeing that data are available when needed.

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  Interoperability and open standards: Communication systems should be based on standard
metering protocols to assure interoperability with changing energy supplier equipment and/or
consumer equipment over the life of the sensing end‐device. True efficiency is the result of
interoperability that allows data to flow freely across various technologies within city functions
such as lighting, transportation, and infrastructure—enabling intelligent communication, while
maintaining security protocols.

 Quality of service (QoS): The term of QoS covers several criteria used to evaluate and select the
communication technologies. The most important of them are as follows: Throughput or bit
rate, network capacity in terms of number of connected devices at the same time, delay, jitter.

4. ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES [5] & [6]

4.1 WIRED TECHNOLOGIES
Wired communication is a part of the smart city communication platform. Generally, it offers a high bit rate,
immunity against interferences, performance stability in terms of achieved bit rates and Bit Error Rate (BER),
unlike wireless communications that suffer from wireless channel impairments and the physical phenomena
weakening the electromagnetic wave during the radio‐wave propagation, such as reflexions, refractions, path
loss, and fading. However, its main drawback is the necessary civil engineering works to lay cables, which
generates higher investments and longer deployment time. This was and will be the main obstacle for
deploying fiber‐to‐the‐home (FTTH). Therefore, there is a big interest to make reuse of existing cables in the
field, like in digital subscriber line (DSL), cable TV (CATV), and power line communications (PLCs). In the
normal telecom services for voice and Internet, the DSL solutions have the largest part of the market for the
access area networks. However, with the apparition of smart cities and some of its special applications, new
technologies have emerged to fulfil some special requirements.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

[5] http://www.intechopen.com/books/smart-cities-technologies/

[6] https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/

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For example, PLC is widely used in Europe for the automated metering infrastructure (AMI) that builds the
core of the smart grid, because utilities want to use their own infrastructure, in this case the low‐voltage power
cables, to build their communication platform. By
avoiding infrastructure from third parties, utilities aim to have a full control on the communication
infrastructure, or at least a part of it. Figure 2 shows reference architecture smart metering using PLC.

FIGURE 2
Reference architecture smart metering using PLC.
4.2 WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES
4.2.1. OVERVIEW
Wireless technologies are living prospectus era, where new standards and releases are developed and issued
each year. This new era has been intensified since the apparition of the first standard (Release 8) of long‐term
evolution (LTE), which was handled as fourth mobile generation (4G), as illustrated in Figure 3. Since then,
the bit rates of mobile communications did not cease in evolving drastically, so that currently 4G are reaching
easily 600 Mbps in cities, and even 1 Gbps has been measured in field trials of 5G (Figure 4). These explosive
throughputs are becoming possible by adopting advanced techniques, like advanced multi‐carrier modulations,
multi‐input‐multi‐output (MIMO), adaptive coding and modulation (ACM).
In spite of these advantages, some critical points are still challenging the use of commercial mobile services in
some smart cities applications. By taking the example of smart grid, the utilities are still seeing the following
critical challenges:

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FIGURE 3
Relative adoption and life cycle of wireless technologies in the last three decades.

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FIGURE 4
Throughput evolution of wireless technologies for access networks and WWAN.

 The high number of users and no service guarantees in critical situations: For some high priority
smart cities applications, such as disaster and public safety management, the share of the same
infrastructure with lower priority uses can compromise high priority applications requirements, thus
making it ineffective.
 Short wireless technologies life cycle: Utilities are running their business models by considering
equipments that last for more than 20 years. However, the modern mobile communications has a short
life cycle, as depicted in Figure 4. In fact, Global System for Mobile Communications/General Packet
Radio Service (GSM/GPRS, i.e. 2G/2.5G) networks is at the end of life, so that AT&T in the United
States already started to switch off their GSM/GRPS infrastructure, as mobile network operators (MNOs)
consider it wastes OPEX and spectrum efficiency. This issue is also discussed for the old version of the
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS, i.e. 3G).
 Short life cycle of electronics: The traditional mechanical electricity meters, called also Ferrari meters,
have a life cycle of about 25 years and more. The modern intelligent smart meters with all types of

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 electronic components inside and its communication module will rarely reach this age of life cycle. As an
example, the power utility in Italy ENEL has a total of more than 32 million of metering points and
ERDF in France has more than 36 million meters. Considering this large number of end‐devices, utilities
must adjust their business models based on an intensive benefit–cost analysis.
 Low battery: Modern mobile networks are strongly consuming the power of the battery.
 Indoor coverage and building penetration: Most of the smart meters are placed in building basements,
which are very rarely reached by the GSM coverage signal, especially in European cities. In this case,
utilities must use a first level of communication, home area network (HAN) or building area network
(BAN). This is also the problem for the communication in smart parking in the underground.
The above‐cited challenges have pushed MNOs and equipment manufacturers to build associations, in order to
unify their points of view together with industrials and to define the requirement of the next generation of
wireless and mobile networks. The most known international association is the next‐generation mobile
network (NGMN) Alliance. Their activities have resulted in new standards and new product and technologies
of wireless networks, mostly known as low‐power wireless area networks (LPWANs).
4.2.2. NEW WAVE OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

4.2.2.1 OVERVIEW
As already stated, smart applications are already deployed using current technologies, and standards are
forecasting more smartness in current deployment enabled by technologies and features to be proposed. As an
example, LTE and LTE‐A can give usable characteristics for smart city applications, in addition to LPWAN.
IoT is tightly related to smart city applications as these applications rely for the most on a smart metering
coupled with a pre‐ and/or post‐intelligence. Thus, smart city LTE‐enabled applications focus on IoT
requirements. Table 2 shows some LPWAN IoT characteristics, sufficient enough today for low rate
applications.
Note that there exist wireless networks already used for low‐power applications, such as Bluetooth, Wi‐Fi, and
ZigBee. However, long‐range performance and cellular M2M networks, on which smart cities are mostly
based, would be costly and energy consuming, besides being expensive as far as hardware and services are
concerned, while many connection devices are massively deployed in a smart city but need to send only small
amounts of data over a long range when maintaining long battery life. In comparison with other technologies,
LPWAN seat at the range shown in Figure 5. Following the use cases, other technologies can be used to the
deployments of IoT.

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 NB LTE‐ LTE‐M EC‐
5G (under
Technology SIGFOX LoRa M Rel. GSM
development)
Rel. 13 12/13 Rel. 13

Range
(outdoor) <13 <11 <15 <11 <15 <15
(km) 160 157 164 156 164 164
MCL (dB)

Licensed Licensed Licensed

Unlicensed Unlicensed 7– 7– 8– Licensed
Spectrum
900 MHz 900 MHz 900 MHz 900 MHz 900 MHz 7–900 MHz
Bandwidth
100 Hz <500 kHz 200 kHz or 1.4 MHz 2.4 MHz Shared
Shared or Shared or Shared

Data rate <100 bps <10 kbps <150 kbps <1 Mbps 10 kbps <1 Mbps

Battery life
>10 >10 >10 >10 >10 >10
(years)

By end of By end of By end of

Availability Today Today By 2020
2016 2016 2016

TABLE 2
Wireless technologies to build LPWAN for IoT connectivity.

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FIGURE 5
LPWAN range vs bandwidth in comparison with other technologies.

4.2.2.2 VARIOUS TECHNOLOGIES FOR PAN/NAN/HAN

There exists an almost bewildering choice of connectivity options for electronics engineers and
application developers working on products and systems for the Internet of Things (IoT).

Many communication technologies are well known such as WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee and Z wave, but
there are also several new emerging networking options such as Thread as an alternative for home
automation applications, and Whitespace TV technologies being implemented in major cities for wider
area IoT-based use cases. Depending on the application, factors such as range, data requirements,
security and power demands and battery life will dictate the choice of one or some form of combination
of technologies. These are some of the major communication technologies on offer to developers.

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Bluetooth

An important short-range communications technology is of course Bluetooth, which

has become very important in computing and many consumer product markets. It is expected to be key
for wearable products in particular, again connecting to the IoT albeit probably via a smartphone in
many cases. The new Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) – or Bluetooth Smart, as it is now branded – is a
significant protocol for IoT applications. Importantly, while it offers similar range to Bluetooth it has
been designed to offer significantly reduced power consumption.
However, Smart/BLE is not really designed for file transfer and is more suitable for small chunks of data.
It has a major advantage certainly in a more personal device context over many competing technologies
given its widespread integration in smartphones and many other mobile devices. According to the
Bluetooth SIG, more than 90 percent of Bluetooth-enabled smartphones, including iOS, Android and
Windows based models, are expected to be ‘Smart Ready’ by 2018.
Devices that employ Bluetooth Smart features incorporate the Bluetooth Core Specification Version 4.0
(or higher – the latest is version 4.2 announced in late 2014) with a combined basic-data-rate and low-
energy core configuration for a RF transceiver, baseband and protocol stack. Importantly, version 4.2 via
its Internet Protocol Support Profile will allow Bluetooth Smart sensors to access the Internet directly via
6LoWPAN connectivity (more on this below). This IP connectivity makes it possible to use existing IP
infrastructure to manage Bluetooth Smart ‘edge’ devices.
Bluetooth SIG manages, develops, and promotes the standard, as well as certifies products as
interoperable. BLE still operates in the same ISM, license-free, 2.4- to 2.483-GHz frequency band as stan
dard Bluetooth. However, it uses a different frequency -hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) scheme.

Standard Bluetooth hops at a rate of 1600 hops per second over 79 1-MHz- wide channels.

BLE FHSS employs 40 2-MHz-wide channels to ensure greater reliability over longer distances.

Standard Bluetooth offers gross data rates of 1,2, or 3 Mbits/s, while BLE’s maximum rate is 1 Mbit/s

with a net throughput of 260 Kbits/s. BLE uses Gaussian frequency shift keying (GFSK) modulation. The
salient characteristics of this technology are:

1. Standard: Bluetooth 4.2 core specification

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 2. Frequency: 2.4GHz (ISM)

3. Range: 50-150m (Smart/BLE)

4. Data Rates: 1Mbps (Smart/BLE)

Zigbee

ZigBee, like Bluetooth, has a large installed base of operation, although perhaps traditionally more in
industrial settings. ZigBee PRO and ZigBee Remote Control (RF4CE), among other available ZigBee
profiles, are based on the IEEE802.15.4 protocol, which is an industry-standard wireless networking
technology operating at 2.4GHz targeting applications that require relatively infrequent data exchanges
at low data-rates over a restricted area and within a 100m range such as in a home or building.
ZigBee/RF4CE has some significant advantages in complex systems offering low-power operation, high
security, robustness and high scalability with high node counts and is well positioned to take advantage
of wireless control and sensor networks in M2M and IoT applications. The latest version of ZigBee is the
recently launched 3.0, which is essentially the unification of the various ZigBee wireless standards into a
single standard.
The ZigBee Alliance established in 2014 is a consortium of companies and other organizations
supporting the development of the standard and promoting its use. There aremore than 220
members. The Alliance performs testing to certify that all products complywith the standard and to
maintain interoperability.
It uses layers 3 and 4 to define additional communications features. These enhancements include
authentication with valid nodes, encryption for security, and a data routing and forwarding capability
that enables mesh networking.

One of the key benefits of ZigBee is the availability of pre-- developed applications. These upper
layer software additions implement specialized uses for ZigBee. Some of these applications include:

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  Building automation for commercial monitoring and control of facilities
 Remote control (RF4CE or RF for consumer electronics)
 Smart energy for home energy monitoring
 Health care for medical and fitness monitoring
 Home automation for control of smart homes
 Input devices for keyboards, mice, touch pads, wands, etc.
 Light Link for control of LED lighting
 Retail services for shopping related uses
 Telecom services (cordless etc.)
 Network services related to large mesh networks
The most popularconfiguration is in the 2.4-GHz band, where the standard defines sixteen 5-MHz chann
els of operation. Maximum data rate is 250 Kbits/s using offset quadrature phase shiftkeying (OQPSK).
Optional specifications provide for operation at 915 MHz (in the U.S.) with 40 Kbits/s using binary
phase shift keying(BPSK) modulation. A European version uses 868 MHz with 20 Kbits/s.
ZigBee’s typical power of 1 mW or 0 dBm limits the free space range to about 10 meters, although
longer ranges are possible depending on conditions. A big issue is co-existence with Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth, which use the same band. Most transceivers have some co-existence mechanism
to minimize interference. The available 16 channels typically allow theradio to find a frequency
with minimum interference.

The salient characteristics of this technology are:

1. Standard: ZigBee 3.0 based on IEEE802.15.4

2. Frequency: 2.4GHz

3. Range: 10-100m

4. Data Rates: 250kbps

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Z-Wave

Z-Wave is a low-power RF communications technology that is primarily designed for

home automation for products such as lamp controllers and sensors among many others. Optimized for
reliable and low-latency communication of small data packets with data rates up to 100kbit/s, it
operates in the sub-1GHz band and is impervious to interference from WiFi and other wireless
technologies in the 2.4-GHz range such as Bluetooth or ZigBee. It supports full mesh networks without
the need for a coordinator node and is very scalable, enabling control of up to 232 devices. Z-Wave uses
a simpler protocol than some others, which can enable faster and simpler development, but the only
maker of chips is Sigma Designs compared to multiple sources for other wireless technologies such as
ZigBee and others.
ITU included the Z-Wave PHY and MAC layers as an option in its new G.9959 standard, which defines a
set of guidelines for sub-1-GHz narrowband wireless devices.
Z- Wave uses the Part 15 unlicensed ISM band. It operates at 908.42 MHz in the U.S. and Canada
but uses other frequencies in other countries depending on their regulations. The modulation is
Gaussian frequency shift keying (GFSK). Available data rates include 9600 bits/s and 40 Kbits/s.
Output power is 1 mW or 0 dBm. As with any wireless technology, the range of transmission
depends on the environment. In free space conditions, a range of up to 30 meters is possible. The
through- wall range is considerably less, of course. The Z Wave Alliance, consortium of more
than 160 companies that design and sell wireless home control products based on the Z- Wave
standard, plays a major role in the Z - Wave system. Currently, more than 575 interoperable
products are available in 22 countries. The salient characteristics of this technology are:

1. Standard: Z-Wave Alliance ZAD12837 / ITU-T G.9959

2. Frequency: 900MHz (ISM)

3. Range: 30m

4. Data Rates: 9.6/40/100kbit/s

For a given power level of 0 dBm, Z‐ Wave’s range is greater than ZigBee simply because the

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lower operating frequency supports it with pure physics. That also translates into a more

reliable connection in some applications. ZigBee uses the widely populated 2.4-GHz ISM band,

which it must share with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other radios that can produce interference. Most ZigBee

devices have co-existence features that help mitigate interference, yet the potential is greater

in the 2.4-GHz band than the 908.42-MHz channel of Z- Wave.

6LowPAN

A key IP (Internet Protocol)-based technology is 6LowPAN (IPv6 Low-power wireless

Personal Area Network). Rather than being an IoT application protocols technology like Bluetooth or
ZigBee, 6LowPAN is a network protocol that defines encapsulation and header compression
mechanisms. The standard has the freedom of frequency band and physical layer and can also be used
across multiple communications platforms, including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 802.15.4 and sub-1GHz ISM. A key
attribute is the IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) stack, which has been a very important introduction in
recent years to enable the IoT. IPv6 is the successor to IPv4 and offers approximately 5 x 1028addresses
for every person in the world, enabling any embedded object or device in the world to have its own
unique IP address and connect to the Internet. Especially designed for home or building automation, for
example, IPv6 provides a basic transport mechanism to produce complex control systems and to
communicate with devices in a cost-effective manner via a low-power wireless network.

Designed to send IPv6 packets over IEEE802.15.4-based networks and implementing open IP standards
including TCP, UDP, HTTP, COAP, MQTT, and web sockets, the standard offers end-to-end addressable
nodes, allowing a router to connect the network to IP. 6LowPAN is a mesh network that is robust,
scalable and self-healing. Mesh router devices can route data destined for other devices, while hosts are
able to sleep for long periods of time. The salient characteristics of this technology are:

1. Standard: RFC6282

2. Frequency: (adapted and used over a variety of other networking media including Bluetooth
Smart (2.4GHz) or ZigBee or low-power RF (sub-1GHz)

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 3. Range: N/A

4. Data Rates: N/A

Thread

A very new IP-based IPv6 networking protocol aimed at the home automation environment is Thread.
Based on 6LowPAN, and also like it, it is not an IoT applications protocol like Bluetooth or ZigBee.
However, from an application point of view, it is primarily designed as a complement to Wi-Fi as it
recognizes that while Wi-Fi is good for many consumer devices that it has limitations for use in a home
automation setup.

Launched in mid-2014 by the Thread Group, the royalty-free protocol is based on various standards
including IEEE802.15.4 (as the wireless air-interface protocol), IPv6 and 6LoWPAN, and offers a resilient
IP-based solution for the IoT. Designed to work on existing IEEE802.15.4 wireless silicon from chip
vendors such as Freescale and Silicon Labs, Thread supports a mesh network using IEEE802.15.4 radio
transceivers and is capable of handling up to 250 nodes with high levels of authentication and
encryption. A relatively simple software upgrade should allow users to run thread on existing
IEEE802.15.4-enabled devices. The salient characteristics of this technology are:

1. Standard: Thread, based on IEEE802.15.4 and 6LowPAN

2. Frequency: 2.4GHz (ISM)

3. Range: N/A

4. Data Rates: N/A

WiFi

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 WiFi connectivity is often an obvious choice for many developers, especially given the
pervasiveness of WiFi within the home environment within LANs. It requires little further explanation
except to state the obvious that clearly there is a wide existing infrastructure as well as offering fast data
transfer and the ability to handle high quantities of data.

Currently, the most common WiFi standard used in homes and many businesses is 802.11n, which offers
serious throughput in the range of hundreds of megabit per second, which is fine for file transfers, but
may be too power-consuming for many IoT applications. The salient characteristics of this technology
are:

1. Standard: Based on 802.11n (most common usage in homes today)

2. Frequencies: 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands

3. Range: Approximately 50m

4. Data Rates: 600 Mbps maximum, but 150-200Mbps is more typical, depending on channel
frequency used and number of antennas (latest 802.11-ac standard should offer 500Mbps to
1Gbps)

NFC

NFC (Near Field Communication) is a technology that enables simple and safe two-way
interactions between electronic devices, and especially applicable for smartphones, allowing consumers
to perform contactless payment transactions, access digital content and connect electronic devices.
Essentially it extends the capability of contactless card technology and enables devices to share
information at a distance that is less than 10cm. It uses ASK (Amplitude Shift Keying) as the modulation
technique.The salient characteristics of this technology are:

1. Standard: ISO/IEC 18000-3

2. Frequency: 13.56MHz (ISM)

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 3. Range: 10cm

4. Data Rates: 100–420kbps

RFID
A radio-frequency identification system uses tags, or labels attached to the objects to be identified.
Two-way radio transmitter-receivers called interrogators or readers send a signal to the tag and read
its response. The readers generally transmit their observations to a computer system running RFID
software or RFID middleware.

RFID tags can be either passive, active or battery assisted passive. An active tag has an on-board
battery and periodically transmits its ID signal. A battery assisted passive (BAP) has a small battery
on board and is activated when in the presence of a RFID reader. The salient characteristics of this
technology are:

1. Standard: ISO/IEC 14543-3-10

2. Frequency: 120–150 kHz (LF), 13.56 MHz (HF), 433 MHz (UHF), 865-868 MHz

(Europe)902-928 MHz (North America) UHF, 2450-5800 MHz (microwave),

3.1–10 GHz (microwave)

3. Range: 10cm to 200m

ANT

ANT represents another ultra-low-power, short-range wireless technology designed for sensor networks
and similar applications. It, too, uses the 2.4-GHz ISM band. The proprietary protocol is developed and
sold by Canadian company Dynastream Innovations Inc., a subsidiary of GPS personal navigation firm
Garmin. It defines a wireless communications protocol stack that enables hardware operating in the
2.4 GHz ISM band to communicate by establishing standard rules for co-existence, data representation,
signalling, authentication, and error detection.It is conceptually similar to Bluetooth low energy, but is
oriented towards usage with sensors.

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ANT also uses the very short duty- cycle technique and deep -sleep modes to ensure very

low power consumption. The ANT protocol is set up to use a single 1-MHz channel for multiple

nodes thanks to a time -division multiplex technique. Each node transmits in its own time slot.
Modulation is GFSK. The salient characteristics of this technology are:

1. Standardization: Proprietary
2. Frequency: 2.4 Ghz
3. Range: 30 m at 0dBm
The comparison of these technologies is shown in Annexure A

4.2.2.3 LPWAN

One of the major issues for M2M communications is the low‐power long‐range communication. LPWAN
technologies, in order to achieve a long range capability, need to use high receiver sensitivities, up to -
130 dBm compared with the -90 to -110 dBm in many traditional wireless technologies. This implies a higher
energy per bit and thus a slower modulation rate. An example here is SigFox, which uses the extremely slow
BPSK modulation. Some existing LPWAN platforms are described in the following:

Sigfox

An alternative wide-range technology is Sigfox, which in terms of range comes between

WiFi and cellular. It uses the ISM bands, which are free to use without the need to acquire licenses, to
transmit data over a very narrow spectrum to and from connected objects. The idea for Sigfox is that for
many M2M applications that run on a small battery and only require low levels of data transfer, then
WiFi’s range is too short while cellular is too expensive and also consumes too much power. Historically,
it is the first to have been developed. SigFox is a narrowband technology using BPSK modulation. It has
thus the advantage of allowing the receiver to only listen in a tiny slice of spectrum, which mitigates the
effect of noise. It has bidirectional functionality, but its capacity going from the base station back to the
endpoint is constrained. It is a narrowband technology called Ultra Narrow Band (UNB) and it uses
DBPSK (Differential BPSK) for uplink & GFSK for downlink. It has thus the advantage of allowing the

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receiver to only listen in a tiny slice of spectrum, which mitigates the effect of noise. It is only designed
to handle low data-transfer speeds of 10 to 1,000 bits per second. It consumes low power and can
deliver a typical stand-by time 20 years with a 2.5Ah battery while it is only 0.2 years for cellular.

Already deployed in tens of thousands of connected objects, the network is currently being rolled out in
major cities across Europe, including ten cities in the UK for example. Sigfox announced that they're
entering 100 cities in the US. In April 2016, they've also announced their roll out plans in Australia & NZ,
Brazil, Oman etc.The network offers a robust, power-efficient and scalable network that can
communicate with millions of battery-operated devices across areas of several square kilometers,
making it suitable for various M2M applications that are expected to include smart meters, patient
monitors, security devices, street lighting and environmental sensors. The Sigfox system uses silicon
such as the EZRadioPro wireless transceivers from Silicon Labs, which deliver industry-leading wireless
performance, extended range and ultra-low power consumption for wireless networking applications
operating in the sub-1GHz band. The salient characteristics of this technology are:

 Standard: Sigfox

 Frequency: 900MHz

 Range: 30-50km (rural environments), 3-10km (urban environments)

 Data Rates: 10-1000bps

Neul

Similar in concept to Sigfox and operating in the sub-1GHz band, Neul leverages very
small slices of the TV White Space spectrum to deliver high scalability, high coverage, low power and
low-cost wireless networks. Systems are based on the Iceni chip, which communicates using the white
space radio to access the high-quality UHF spectrum, now available due to the analogue to digital TV
transition. The communications technology is called Weightless, which is a new wide-area wireless
networking technology designed for the IoT that largely competes against existing GPRS, 3G, CDMA and
LTE WAN solutions. Data rates can be anything from a few bits per second up to 100kbps over the same

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single link; and devices can consume as little as 20 to 30mA from 2xAA batteries, meaning 10 to 15 years
in the field. The salient characteristics of this technology are:

 Standard: Neul

 Frequency: 900MHz (ISM), 458MHz (UK), 470-790MHz (White Space)

 Range: 10km

 Data Rates: Few bps up to 100kbps

LoRaWAN

Again, similar in some respects to Sigfox and Neul, LoRaWAN targets wide-area network
(WAN) applications and is designed to provide low-power WANs with features specifically needed to
support low-cost mobile secure bi-directional communication in IoT, M2M and smart city and industrial
applications. Optimized for low-power consumption and supporting large networks with millions and
millions of devices, data rates range from 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps. The salient characteristics of this
technology are:

 Standard: LoRaWAN

 Frequency: Various

 Range: 2-5km (urban environment), 15km (suburban environment)

 Data Rates: 0.3-50 kbps.

It can be arranged to provide coverage similar to that of a cellular network, with millions of nodes and a
battery life in excess of 10 years. In practice, LoRa networks are already deployed by cellular network
operators who use existing masts to mount LoRa antennas, with possibility of combining antennas in some
cases. Requirements for LoRAWAN meet target key requirements of IoT such as secure bidirectional
communication, mobility, and localization services. The main advantage of this standard is the simplicity of
local installation with an easiness of use for the end user and developer. It uses CSS (Chirp Spread Spectrum)

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modulation technique. Supported data rates range from 0.3 to 50 kbps, and the selection of the data rate is a
trade‐off between communication range and message duration.

Cellular

Any IoT application that requires operation over longer distances can take advantage of
GSM/3G/4G cellular communication capabilities. While cellular is clearly capable of sending high
quantities of data, especially for 4G, the expense and also power consumption will be too high for many
applications, but it can be ideal for sensor-based low-bandwidth-data projects that will send very low
amounts of data over the Internet. A key product in this area is the SparqEE range of products, including
the original tiny CELLv1.0 low-cost development board and a series of shield connecting boards for use
with the Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms. The salient characteristics of this technology are:

 Standard: GSM/GPRS/EDGE (2G), UMTS/HSPA (3G), LTE (4G)

 Frequencies: 900/1800/1900/2100MHz

 Range: 35km max for GSM; 200km max for HSPA

 Data Rates (typical download): 35-170kps (GPRS), 120-384kbps (EDGE), 384Kbps-2Mbps (UMTS),
600kbps-10Mbps (HSPA), 3-10Mbps (LTE)

Other solutions existing in the market, such as Weightless, Symphony Link, Nwave, or Ingenu.
Note that most LPWAN solutions are addressing similar use cases identified within the 5G Umbrella, with the
name of “Massive IoT”. Some of these solutions may be an alternative solution for smart cities while waiting
for 5G standardization.

5. CONCLUSION
Back in 2010, Ericsson set the bar for much of the subsequent hype around the Internet of Things by
making a very pubic prediction that by 2020 there would be 50 billion internet connected
devices. Others have been more or less aggressive, suggesting “conservative” numbers of 20 billion,
while some have stretched credulity with projections up to 1.5 trillion. The 50 billion isn’t just IoT, it

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covers everything from phones to smart TVs to tractors, but the biggest single element is what we now
call the Internet of Things, with the original 50 billion prediction including around 20 billion cellular IoT
connections.

Most analysts have supported the Ericsson line with an estimate somewhere between 30 and 50
billion. But in their latest Mobility Report, Ericsson quietly changed their minds. They still kept the
headline number of around 50 billion connected devices, but dropped the number of cellular connected
IoT devices in 2020 from their previous estimate of 20 billion to just over 1 billion.

At present 865-867 MHz is being used for various devices in different verticals in India. A study regarding
additional requirement of spectrum in this band or some other band was done by M2M Working groups
(WGs) of IOT division in TEC.

As per the study report, the existing 2 MHz (865-867 MHz) would not be sufficient for the billions of
M2M/IoT/IoE devices that would be deployed in the near future. In the Release 2 of the Technical
Report of Power Working Group of IOT division in TEC (available on www.tec.gov.in/Tecnical-Reports/),
it is recommended to allocate 10-12 MHz for catering to these devices. In addition, the permissible
channel spacing may be increased to 400 KHz for reducing adjacent channel interference and to achieve
higher data rates.

A large number of applications build the application layer of the smart city architecture, where each
application has its own ICT requirement and expectation. Therefore, building such ICT infrastructure will
involve different technologies depending on the application and the deployment environment. Wireless
technologies are the most desired solution, because of all the economic and societal benefits they
promise, particularly flexibility and ease of deployment. However, there are still challenges that wireless
communication has to cope with, like power consumption, ease of installation, great indoor coverage.

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 ANNEXURE A

COMPARISON OF WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES

N/W USA Max. Max. Security

type Frequency range data

Wireless Standard
rate
and
power

6-780
Mbps
IEEE 2.4 , 6.75 WEP,
Gbps at
60 GHz

802.11a, 3.6, 100 1 Watt WPA,

WiFi WLAN
m,
11b, 5, WPA2

11g, 60 GHz

11n,
11ac,
11ad
908.42 30 100Kb Triple
Z-wave Z-wave Mesh
m ps, 1mW DES
MHz
Bluetooth,
2400 to 56/

1 to 3
Formerly 2483.5 100 128 bit
Bluetooth WPAN Mbps, 1
m
IEEE MHz Watt

802.15.1

31
 Bluetooth IoT 2400 to

1Mbps
WPA 100 128 bit
Smart(BLE) Inter- 2483.5 , 10-500
N m AES
mW

connect MHz

250
IEEE 10
Zigbee Mesh Kbps, 128 bit
802.15.4 m
1mW
MHz
2400 to
IEEE 251
11 128 bit
THREAD 802.15.4, Mesh Kbps , 2
2483.5 m AES
6LoWPAN mWatt
MHz
Point 423
Many 13.56 Kbps,
RFID to 1m Possible
standards about
Point MHz 1mW

Point 424
ISO/IEC 13.56 0.1
NFC to Kbps,1 Possible
13157 m
to 2 mW
Point MHz
1Mbps
ANT+ 2.4
,

100
ANT+ WSN AES-128
m
Alliance GHz 1mW

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