Smartphones as M2M Gateways in Smart Cities IoT Applications

Smart Cities are a key application domain for the Internet of Things (IoT), and it is coming nearer everyday through pilot trials and deployments in various cities around the world. In Porto, Portugal, a city-wide IoT Living Lab emerged after we deployed several testbeds, e.g. harbour and a city-scale vehicular networks, and carried out various experiments with the SenseMyCity crowdsensor. In this paper, we discuss how a standard Machine-to-Machine (M2M) middleware is a key enabler of our e-health platform and SenseMyCity crowdsensor, powered by the use of smartphones as M2M gateways. M2M standards provided by ETSI/oneM2M are essential for a paradigm shift, aiming at making the IoT truly interoperable without the need for human intervention. In this work, we map two applications that rely on the role of a smartphone as a gateway, which acts as a proxy to connect legacy devices to the IoT using a standard middleware. We illustrate the advantages of using M2M, and, as a proof-of-concept, we measure and quantify the energy savings obtained, showing improvements of smartphones' battery life.