A Review of Smart Homes—Past, Present, and Future

A smart home is an application of ubiquitous computing in which the home environment is monitored by ambient intelligence to provide context-aware services and facilitate remote home control. This paper presents an overview of previous smart home research as well as the associated technologies. A brief discussion on the building blocks of smart homes and their interrelationships is presented. It describes collective information about sensors, multimedia devices, communication protocols, and systems, which are widely used in smart home implementation. Special algorithms from different fields and their significance are explained according to their scope of use in smart homes. This paper also presents a concrete guideline for future researchers to follow in developing a practical and sustainable smart home.