Simulator for Smart City Environment

Abstract

This paper describes a project aimed to develop a Smart City simulator capable of testing the performance of Smart City architectures. It is based on a small schematic of a city, where devices of various types and different properties coexist, all communicate with an Edge. Simulated devices act as sensors, reading values (temperature, pollution, etc.) from common services, simulating a Cyber-Physical System (CPS). Each device opens its own connection, sends its data to the Edge, has an authentication method, and closes its connection, offering a proper interface to test architectures—which, from a functional point of view, do not see any difference between real and simulated devices. Concerning visualization, the simulator runs online and implements an open architecture, allowing anyone anywhere to simulate devices or run/create services, and see the results on an animated web page, this way contributing for the simulated Smart City ecosystem. Finally, the services are independent servers that can be used to study the behavior of real variables (like noise), allowing to explore different models.