Internet of Things for Smart Homes and Smart Cities

With the improvement of fifth generation (5G) and beyond mobile technologies, Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more important in daily life as it provides many facilities for people in their homes and cities. The IoT can be considered a network of physical devices (“things”) used to connect and exchange information with other devices over the Internet. 5G and beyond technologies are expected to provide much more capacity and higher speed, helping the rapid growth of the IoT market. Nowadays, it is estimated that approximately 6–7 billion devices are connected through IoT technology and it is expected to increase to 20–22 billion in the near future. Smart Grid 3.0 is based on smart intelligence, automation, and data-enabled decisions, providing cost-effective electricity efficiency to consumers and reducing peak demand by enabling electrical utilities via smart technologies and improved security. So, IoT is expected to be a major technology for smart home and smart city applications and services that are also a part of the Smart Grid ecosystem. This chapter covers both IoT-based smart homes and smart cities. First, the IoT technology is introduced, and then, the IoT architecture is explained in the context of three layers included in its structure. In addition, new generation mobile technologies, namely 5G and beyond, are discussed for the IoT. After introducing the IoT technology with its architecture and enabling technologies, the chapter’s emphasis is on smart homes and smart cities by explaining protocols and architectures of smart environments with IoT-based services. In the third part of this chapter, the smart homes are presented in detail by mentioning smart home architectures, communication and medium protocols that can be used in smart homes, and several important services based on the IoT. Finally, the smart city concept alongside its architecture is given, and popular smart city services are explored. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.