XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE Emerging Paradigm of IoT Enabled Smart Villages Rohani Rohan School of Information Technology King Mongkut’s Unveristy of Technology Thonburi Bangkok, Thailand rohani.rohan@mail.kmutt.ac.th Debajyoti Pal School of Information Technology King Mongkut’s Unveristy of Technology Thonburi Bangkok, Thailand debajyoti.pal@sit.kmutt.ac.th Bunthit Watanapa School of Information Technology King Mongkut’s Unveristy of Technology Thonburi Bangkok, Thailand bunthit@sit.kmutt.ac.th Suree Funilkul School of Information Technology King Mongkut’s Unveristy of Technology Thonburi Bangkok, Thailand suree@sit.kmutt.ac.th Abstract—Smart-village is an emerging paradigm that tries to digitize various aspects of rural activities using various IoT technologies. Different activities like smart-agriculture, waste- management, irrigation-management, livestock management, smart energy, smart-healthcare, and smart-education fall under its purview. However, infrastructure and cost are two major barriers towards a smart-village implementation and sustainability, that differentiates it from a smart-city. Considering this we present the current state-of-art of smart-villages by creating a detailed taxonomy. A collaborative edge-computing model is proposed keeping in mind the resource constrains in a smart-village. Finally, the open research issues and challenges are discussed. Keywords—communication technologies; edge computing; internet-of-things; smart villages I. INTRODUCTION With the advent of IoT, the 3I’s (Innovation, Intelligence, and Interconnection) have been the key concepts behind smart- cities [1, 2]. While considerable research efforts have been given into various aspects of smart-cities since the past decade, the concept of smart-villages is an emerging one that has gained interest very recently [3]. While the objective behind using IoT technologies is similar both in case of cities and villages, i.e., to make them smart, there are certain key differences. Therefore, the question arises that are smart-cities and smart-villages same or different, and can the same technologies be used in both the cases? How the cyber-physical systems (CPS) are in case of smart-villages, and what current underlying communication or sensor technologies are being used? In this article, we define smart-villages as “villages that use information and communication technologies (ICT) for advancing their economic and social development aiming to make them smart and sustainable”. This smart and sustainability concept includes agriculture, healthcare, rural energy, education, and other infrastructural facilities. Although the concept behind smart- cities and smart-villages is the same, cost and sustainability are the major differentiators for both the contexts. The number, variety and, complexity of the CPS systems needed in smart- villages are smaller and different than that in smart-cities. For e.g., smart-agriculture is more relevant and useful in villages, whereas smart parking systems are more relevant in cities. Moreover, smart-village technologies have to overcome various obstacles like 1) lack of continuous electricity, 2) less operation cost, 3) lack of proper computation resources, 4) lack of proper communication technologies, and 5) presence of a variety of heterogeneous physical objects. These present challenges that are not found in the smart-city paradigm. Through this article, we aim to address three major points. First, we briefly track the current developments in smart-village scenario and propose a taxonomy for the same. While creating this taxonomy, we focus on the communication and networking aspects of smart-villages. Second, since smart-villages are unique and somewhat challenged due to limited technological resources, we propose how a new emerging computing paradigm called the Collaborative Edge Computing (CEC) can be effectively integrated in a smart-village ecosystem. Finally, we present the open research issues and challenges into the smart-village paradigm to give future research directions. II. TOWARDS A SMART-VILLAGE TAXONOMY A. Smart-cities vs. Smart-villages: The Differences Before creating the taxonomy for smart-villages we highlight the differences in the smart-city and smart-village paradigms. Resources are easily available in a smart-city scenario, such as wired/wireless communications, computing infrastructure, or even energy. The design and operational cost of smart-cities are higher that can be justified in terms of the bigger population it caters to [4] [5]. However, in a village environment, not all the resources are easily available. Implementing a smart infrastructure in a village scenario is therefore challenging. Moreover, considering the lower village population, the operating costs of the smart services must also be minimal. Thus, whatever technological solutions are to be used in smart-villages need to be cheaper for such services to sustain. While many services are common amongst both the scenarios like smart-healthcare, smart-energy, or smart- education, there are some unique services too in the smart- village context. Smart-agriculture, smart-dairy services, or smart-farming are some of the unique aspects of smart-villages. Therefore, low cost and sustainability are two crucial factors that distinguish smart-villages from smart-cities. Motivations for creating technologies for smart-villages are evident: 1) using the 978-1-6654-4154-4/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE 2022 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) 2022 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) | 978-1-6654-4154-4/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICCE53296.2022.9730482 Authorized licensed use limited to: King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi. Downloaded on March 19,2022 at 03:19:04 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.