SmartSantander proposes a unique in the world city-scale experimental research facility in support of typical applications and services for a smart city. This unique experimental facility will be sufficiently large, open and flexible to enable horizontal and vertical federation with other experimental facilities and stimulates development of new applications by users of various types including experimental advanced research on IoT technologies and realistic assessment of users’ acceptability tests. The project envisions the deployment of 20,000 sensors in Belgrade, Guildford, Lübeck and Santander (12,000), exploiting a large variety of technologies.

How does the infrastructure work?

A scalable, heterogeneous and trustable large-scale real-world experimental facility will be deployed. During the RWI sessions of the Future Internet Assembly in Prague in early 2009, the main requirements for a  real-world IoT experimental platform were identified. SmartSantander will address all these requirements by specifying, designing, and implementing the necessary building blocks. An initial high-level architecture  for the resulting new experimental facility has already been worked out, and is shown in Figure below. This architecture heavily relies on existing components which will be supplemented by the so far missing building blocks.

What can be tested and how?

One of the main objectives of the project is to fuel the use of the Experimentation Facility among the scientific community, end users and service providers in order to reduce the technical and societal barriers that prevent the IoT concept to become an everyday reality. To attract the widest interest and demonstrate the usefulness of the SmartSantander platform, a key aspect that will be addressed is the inclusion of a wide set of applications. Application areas will be selected based on their high potential impact on the citizens as well as to exhibit the diversity, dynamics and scale that are essential in advanced protocol solutions, and will be able to be evaluated through the platform. Thus, the platform will be attractive for all involved stakeholders: Industries, communities of users, other entities that are willing to use the experimental facility for  deploying, and assessing new services and applications, and Internet researchers to validate their cutting-edge technologies (protocols, algorithms, radio interfaces, etc.).

Key Functions

1. Validation of approaches to the architectural model of the IoT.
2. Evaluation of the key building blocks of the IoT architecture, in particular, IoT interaction & management protocols and mechanisms; device technologies; and key support services such as discovery, identity management and security.
3. Evaluation of social acceptance of IoT technologies and services.