Communication Technologies and Their Contribution to Sustainable Smart Cities

Sustainable smart cities (SSC) are becoming a reality as many develop their unique model of smart cities based on vast communication infrastructure. New technologies led to innovative ecosystems where transportation, logistics, maintenance, etc., are automated and accessed remotely. Information and communication coordinate their overall activities. Sensors embedded in these devices sense the environment to provide the required input. Together with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning, it enables them to facilitate effective decision-making. This chapter discusses the role of integrating technologies in smart cities, focusing on the information and communication aspects, challenges, limitations, and mitigation strategies related to the infrastructure, implementations, and best practices for attaining SSC. We propose a four-layered model covering the main aspects of incorporating communication technology within sustainable smart cities. It covers the basic physical level, providing guidelines for designing a smart city that supports the requirements of a proper communications infrastructure. The level above is the network level where we describe current communication networks and technologies. The rest two upper layers represent the software with integrated and embedded communication components. In summary, we conclude that communication technology is the key enabler of most of the activities performed in smart cities.