An Aspect-Oriented Approach to Time-Constrained Strategies in Smart City IoT Applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing rapidly in various domains, including smart city applications. In many cases, IoT data in smart city applications have time constraints in which they are relevant and acceptable to the task at hand—a window of validity (WoV). Existing algorithms, such as ex post facto adjustment, data offloading, fog computing, and blockchain applications, generally focus on managing the time-validity of data. In this paper, we consider that the functional components of the IoT devices’ decision-making strategies themselves may also be defined in terms of a WoV. We propose an aspect-oriented mechanism to supervise the execution of the IoT device’s strategy, manage the WoV constraints, and resolve invalidated functional components through communication in the multi-agent system. The applicability of our proposed approach is considered with respect to the improved cost, service life, and environmental outcomes for IoT devices in a smart cities context.