A Smart City Assisted Internet of Military Defense Things Architecture

As Smart Cities become a reality, these intelligent urban environments will likely impact the future operational environment, where future military forces will have to conduct a range of operations. Situational awareness (SA), a critical element of military operations, can be produced and maintained by leveraging existing Smart City Internet of Things (IoT), while deploying in parallel the Internet of Military Defense Things (IoMDT). Therefore, in this article, we propose an architecture that enables future military forces, in a permissive intelligent urban operational environment, to access Smart City IoT, deploy their own IoMDT, and leverage distributed and opportunistic computing paired with distributed edge intelligence, to produce and maintain accurate and real-time SA.