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One of the crucial challenges for future smart cities is to devise a citywide network infrastructure capable of effectively guaranteeing resource-efficient and reliable communications while managing the complexity of heterogeneous devices and access technologies. This edited book highlights and showcases state of the art research and innovations in 5G and beyond wireless communications technologies for connected smart cities. The main objectives of this work include the exploration of recent advances and application potentials of various communication technologies as promising enablers for future networked smart cities, the investigation of design-specific issues for the integration of different architectural components of smart cities, and addressing various challenges and identifying opportunities in terms of interoperability of potential solutions.

The latest advances in several emerging technologies such as AI, blockchain, privacy-preserving algorithms used in localization and positioning systems, cloud computing and computer vision all have great potential in facilitating social distancing. Benefits range from supporting people to work from home to monitoring micro- and macro- movements such as contact tracing apps using Bluetooth, tracking the movement and transportation level of a city and wireless positioning systems to help people keep a safe distance by alerting them when they are too close to each other or to avoid congestion. However, implementing such technologies in practical scenarios still faces various challenges.

Recent technological advances have made possible the creation of a chain of non-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) communications systems. Such systems offer the advantages of ubiquity, relatively low costs, and upgradable infrastructure that enables the use of innovative on-board technologies. This evolution opens up a plethora of opportunities for massive self-organized, reconfigurable and resilient NGSO constellations, which can operate as a global network.

Satellite communications (SatCom) plays a vital role in ensuring seamless access to telecommunications services anytime, and is a viable option for delivering telecommunication services in a wide range of sectors such as aeronautical, military, maritime, rescue and disaster relief. It should be an important component of 5G-and-beyond wireless architectures as it can complement terrestrial telecommunication solutions in various scenarios to provide highly reliable and secure connectivity over a wide geographical area. This book explores promising scenarios for 5G SatCom, novel paradigms for hybrid/integrated satellite-terrestrial integration, and emerging technologies for the next generation of SatCom systems. Topics covered include: Role of SatCom in the 5G Era; 5G satellite use cases and scenarios; SDN-enabled networks, NFV-based scenarios and on-board processing for satellite-terrestrial integration; EHF broadband aeronautical SatCom systems; Next-generation NGSO SatCom systems; Diversity combining and handover techniques for MEO satellites; Non-linear countermeasures for multicarrier satellites; SDN demonstrator for multi-beam satellite precoding; Beam-hopping SatCom systems; Optical on-off keying data links for LEO downlink applications; Ultra-high speed data relay systems; On-board interference detection and localization; Advanced random access schemes for SatCom systems; Interference avoidance, mitigation and dynamic spectrum sharing for hybrid satellite-terrestrial systems; and Two-way satellite relaying.