Cellular centric M2M communications architecture for smart cities development in Nigeria

Smart city (SC) is defined by Navigant Research as the integration of ICT and communications technology into a strategic approach to sustainability, citizen well-being and economic development. Also, a SC is defined as the connecting of devices with little processing power together to solve problems in the city. To this end, smart devices have being identified as the most feasible approach to achieve cities that are sustainable, improve citizens wellbeing and lead to economic development as illustrated by the former definition. To achieve SC, the smart devices will be applied to improve virtually all the human endeavours. But the best energy efficient architecture that will enable connections between all these devices still remain vague as results of divergent applications and their associate unique operational characteristics. This paper proposes a unique hybrid energy efficient cellular centric architecture for smart cities development in Nigeria.