An NB-IoT-based smart trash can system for improved health in smart cities

The intelligent treatment of urban garbage is an important component of creating a smart city and also solves several problems associated with urban garbage. Many traditional garbage cans are widely distributed, resulting in a waste of human and material resources, untimely government. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an intelligent system based on edge computing and the narrow-band Internet of things (NB-IoT) for monitoring smart trash cans (STCs). The deployed intelligent garbage cans are distributed throughout the city and are equipped with a variety of sensors, including a compression sensor, a location sensor, an infrared sensor, and an alarm sensor. The data sent from the smart bins are preprocessed through edge nodes for data classification and priority transmission, which reduces the required network transmission bandwidth and the computational tasks at the centralized data center. The NB-IoT is a narrow-band communication technology with low power consumption, wide coverage, low cost, and large capacity. The experimental results show that the proposed STC system shows good system performance, and allows for intelligent management of garbage in smart cities.