Internet of Things (IoT) Enabled Architecture for Social Distancing During Pandemic

• Main Authors: Shama Siddiqui, Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir, Anwar Ahmed Khan, Indrakshi Dey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-04-01
• Series: Frontiers in Communications and Networks
• Subjects: pandemic; architecture; IoT; sensors; network; COVID-19
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frcmn.2021.614166/full

Social distancing has been regarded as a key method by the authorities worldwide to manage the pandemic of COVID-19. Digital technologies play a crucial role to support the social, professional and economic activities when people are forced to stay locked-down in their homes. Internet of things (IoT) technologies have a track of providing high quality remote health care and automation services which could guarantee social distancing while maintaining health and well-being of populations. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end IoT architecture to support the social distancing in the event of pandemic. The architecture comprises of the major use cases of IoT in relevance with the COVID-19. Furthermore, we also present a short-term and long-term strategy to mange the social distancing methodology using the proposed IoT architecture. The challenges associated with each layer of architecture have been highlighted and design guidelines have been presented to deal with them.