SimulCity: Planning Communications in Smart Cities

Communication networks have become a critical element in the development of smart cities. The information flows generated by thousands of sensors and systems must be managed to assure the adequate guarantees of quality, availability, and security. This paper introduces the SimulCity tool, which assists in the design of a smart city’s communications convergent network. SimulCity allows a flexible simulation of different scenarios where multiple heterogeneous sources of human type communications (HTCs) and machine type communications (MTCs) compete for limited bandwidth resources. SimulCity evaluates the impact of new services on the performance of a municipal communications network and, consequently, assists the modification of network values to optimize bandwidth and reduce costs. Several network characteristics can be easily configured in SimulCity, such as the definition of traffic sources, the parametrization of different network mechanisms, access admission control, quality of service (QoS), and traffic in the multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network. SimulCity was used to simulate different projects in the smart city of Valencia (Spain). Specifically, SimulCity was used to study the impact on the Valencia City Council’s communications network of several new services: the solid waste collection supervision, the street lighting management, the control of regulated parking areas, and the upgrade of voice and video communications systems of the city government buildings. The results obtained have allowed the analysis of the impact that these new services have on the existing network and to perform an adequate dimensioning of the future municipal communications network.