A service-oriented middleware for cloud of things and fog computing supporting smart city applications

Several cities around the world are seeking to adopt the smart city concept to enhance the living quality of their residents and optimize city resources. Smart cities heavily rely on utilizing a number of technologies to improve the performance and services in healthcare, transportation, energy, education, and many others, while reducing costs and resource consumption. One of the promising technologies to support such efforts is the Cloud of Things (CoT). CoT can provide a platform for linking the cyber parts of the smart city that are executed on the cloud with the physical parts of the smart city including residents, vehicles, power grids, buildings, water networks, hospitals and other physical resources. Another technology that can be utilized for enhancing smart cities services is Fog Computing, which extends the traditional Cloud Computing paradigm to the edge of the network to enable better support for operating enhanced services. However, proper integration and efficient utilization of CoT and Fog Computing for smart cities is not an easy task. The paper discusses how the service-oriented middleware approach can help resolve some of the challenges of developing and operating smart city services using CoT and Fog Computing. In addition, this paper proposes a service-oriented middleware, called SmartCityWare, for effective integration and utilization of CoT and Fog Computing for smart cities.