An Interoperable Realization of Smart Cities with Plug and Play based Device Management

The primal problem with Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for smart cities is the lack of interoperability at various levels, and more predominately at the device level. While there exist multitude of platforms from multiple manufacturers, the existing ecosystem still remains highly closed. In this paper, we propose SNaaS or Sensor/Network as a Service: a service layer that enables the creation of the plug-n-play infrastructure, across platforms from multiple vendors, necessary for interoperability and successful deployment of large-scale city wide systems. In order to correctly position the new service layer, we present a high level reference IoT architecture for smart city implementations, and follow it up with the workflow details of SNaaS along with preliminary microbenchmarks. Keywords—IEEE 1451, Plug and Play, Self describing devices, IoT reference architecture, Smart cities