Role of IoT-Cloud Ecosystem in Smart Cities : Review and Challenges

Smart Cities is one of the most important Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Billions of smart devices on IoT produce volumes of data directed to cloud for storage and processing. Sending complete data to cloud is least preferred from resource utilization perspective comprising of bandwidth and storage. Therefore, cloud computing paradigm limitations conquered by fog computing, acting as a bridge between IoT and cloud. Further, the limited computational capacity of end-devices in IoT infrastructure and inherited pros and cons of cloud and fog computing necessitates for all three paradigms to work together to full fill the needs of sustainable infrastructure for smart city. Keeping in view the need of integrating fog computing paradigm (due to its limited storage and computational capabilities), with IoT and cloud infrastructure, this article reviews the literature on role of IoT & cloud ecosystem in smart cities along with parameters of evaluation and future research directions in smart cities. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the National Conference on Functional Materials: Emerging Technologies and Applications in Materials Science.