Smart WSN-based ubiquitous architecture for smart cities

In the quest for better quality of life and living standards, people living in rural areas are expected to move to urban locales. As this trend continues, more than half of world´s population is expected to make cities their place of dwelling. To meet this massive influx of rural masses into urban areas, the cities world over need to equip themselves with robust infrastructure that provides necessary amenities like, adequate & clean power, hygienic water in sufficient quantities and accommodation that makes optimum use of resources in a sustainable manner. Based on these requirements, a host of applications like, smart power generation & distribution, smart traffic management, smart waste management & utilization, smart governance, etc., are being developed. The paper discusses few research issues and challenges related to the development of IT infrastructure for smart cities. Research efforts in this direction, however, appear to be application centric. Not much attention has been given to develop an IT based holistic infrastructural framework for smart cities. To this end, we develop a conceptual architecture: Smart WSN-based Infrastructural Framework for smart Transactions (SWIFT) that provides a ubiquitous platform for seamless interaction of various smart objects, devices and systems. In this paper, we introduce the SWIFT architecture and discuss issues related to its implementation.