In recent decades, expansion in urban areas has faced issues such as management of public waste, noise, mobility, and air quality, among others. In this scenario, Internet of Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) scenarios are being considered for Smart Cities solutions based on the deployment of wireless remote sensor nodes to monitor large urban areas. However, as the number of nodes increases, the amount of data to be routed increases significantly as well, meaning that the choice of the data routing process has great importance in terms of the energy consumption and lifetime of the network. In this work, we describe and evaluate the energy consumption of routing protocols for WSN-based Smart Cities applications in LoRa-based mesh networks, then propose a novel energy-saving radio power adjustment (RPA) routing protocol. The Cupcarbon network simulator was used to evaluate the performance of different routing protocols in terms of their data package delivery rate, average end-to-end delay, average jitter, throughput, and load consumption of battery charge. Additionally, a novel tool for determining the range of nodes based on the Egli propagation model was designed and integrated into Cupcarbon. The routing protocols used in this work are Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), and Distance Vector Routing (DVR). Our simulation results show that AODV presents the best overall performance, DSR achieves the best results for power consumption, and DVR is the best protocol in terms of latency. Finally, the proposed RPA routing protocol presents power savings of 11.32% compared to the original DSR protocol.

In this work, some experimental results aiming to assess the performance of LoRa modulation are presented taking in consideration two specific scenarios (namely, a dense urban area and a forest environment). These scenarios have been chosen since they are very prone for environment monitoring and protection. The considered LoRa performance criteria are Range, Packet Reception Rate (PR) and Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI). The obtained experimental results have provided valuable information on how LoRa modulation can be influenced according to specific environment characteristics as well as combination of them. In addition, experimental results shows that, using a particular LoRA setup, packet loss may be near zero even with a high signal attenuation demonstrating the LoRA robustness feature.

With the increasing tendency of incorporating technology into environments and activities in everyday life, new methods are being proposed to better integrate devices and mankind. Networks designed for monitoring areas through video and image systems are being implemented in several applications. Recent studies have shown interest from both the academy and industry to integrate wireless surveillance networks with low-cost and long range transmission technologies, such as LoRa (Long Range). With the intention to explore this topic, this work presents the development of a system prototype for intelligent monitoring as a basis to future implementation of low-cost LoRa-based Wireless Image Sensor Networks (WISN). The system developed consists of a processing unit, a data routing interface and multiple sensor nodes. Its operation is autonomous and initiated through the detection of human presence, by the sensor node, capturing an image of the individuals present at each detection. The data is transmitted through LoRa devices to the central hub, where python-based methods of facial detection and recognition are employed. Several tests were performed to both adjust the system and to verify its efficiency. The results achieved were satisfactory, indicating the viability of the proposed low-cost LoRa-based WISN.

During the day of October 7-8, the congress has invited experts from the sector of Smart Cities to organize a sectoral debate. This debate will be composed of prestigious companies in the sector, Public Administration, as well as specialized consultants. The aim is to give a business point of view around Smart Cities. CYTED is the Ibero-American Program of Science and Technology for Development, created by the governments of Ibero-American countries to promote cooperation on issues of science, technology and innovation for the harmonious development of Ibero-America. CYTED achieves its objectives through different financing instruments that mobilize Ibero-American entrepreneurs, researchers and experts and allow them to be trained and generate joint research, development and innovation projects. Thus, the countries that make up the CYTED Program are able to keep up to date with the most recent advances and scientific-technological developments.