This chapter presents a systematic review of prior research work that is closely aligned to the subject of interest related with internet of things (IoT) and smart city initiatives in Middle Eastern countries. Since internet of things technology (IoT) is the new revolution in the existing services provision environment due to increased contact with high-speed internet access, and the need to provide services more quickly and with minimal effort, costs and keeping pace with the development witnessed by the rest of the advanced countries of the world at a time connection is no longer limited by political borders of the states. This encompasses articles, unpublished papers and theses, conference papers, and memos. The chapter is an evaluation of previous research on the current research topic and serves as a space for research gap identification and hypotheses development in the field of IoT with smart city development initiatives.
TopInternet Of Things And Fog Computing
The concept of IoT refers to the ability of physical objects (things) to be connected to the internet (Al-Fuqaha et al., 2015). While IoT is actually not a new technology, it presents a new way of using existing technology to include capabilities of devices to be available over the internet(Whitmore et al., 2015). As depicted in Figure 1, objects embedded with software designed network addressing specific useful information to the object to make independent useful decisions (Huang & Li, 2010). Khan et al., (2012) highlighted the basic IoT workflow as sensory, activation and smartness indicating that to an object must be able to sense a data information as required per time autonomously and such input should trigger an action which can be performed automatically and then give status information about output of the system based on the input (Khan et al., 2012).
IoT technology depends on a proper combination of software, hardware, and architectures to function adequately (Whitmore et al., 2015). As we have mentioned, IoT technology uses existing technologies as the foundation upon which its infrastructures are built. Regarding hardware, Near Field Communication (NFC), Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) and Sensor networks are critical to the deployment of IoT(Whitmore et al., 2015).
RFID uses electromagnetic fields to communicate over a short range between RFID tags and RFID readers. The RFID tag carries varying forms of data which may include electronic product code commonly used in IoT applications.
An electronic product code is a specific identification code implanted in objects to enable it for tracking and communication with RFID technology. RFID has been established for object tracking, and this function is also fundamental to the implementation of IoT technology (Ngai, Moon, Riggins, & Yi, 2008). It can also be used in supply chain management, public utilities, retailing, food safety, aviation and others. Perhaps the most important benefit of RFID is the ability to access the data in RFID tags remotely over the internet (Ngai et al., 2008).
Another important underlining hardware for the deployment of IoT Technology is the NFC, similar to RFID; NFC involves short-range communication mechanism in which devices in proximity can use radio communication. NFC builds on RFID technology in that it also uses the NFC tags that carry the data integrated into smart devices that enable them to communicate when brought in close proximity. A common implementation of NFC tags is in the smart posters where readable data from the poster can be transmitted to smart phones can have NFC tags embedded in it.
The third hardware that IoT technologies rely on is the sensory networks. This refers to devices that have the ability to monitor environmental conditions such as humidity, temperature, quantity, and movement. Wireless sensor network, on the other hand, involves the simultaneous use of multiple sensors. IoT capabilities of machine-to-human communication are achieved through the use of sensory network and actuators. While sensors detect changes, actuators perform required action to affect the change. Both sensors and actuators are often deployed in sensor-actuator networks.