Enabling smart cloud services through remote sensing: An internet of everything enabler

The recent emergence and success of cloud-based services has empowered remote sensing and made it very possible. Cloud-assisted remote sensing (CARS) enables distributed sensory data collection, global resource and data sharing, remote and real-time data access, elastic resource provisioning and scaling, and pay-as-you-go pricing models. CARS has great potentials for enabling the so-called Internet of Everything (IoE), thereby promoting smart cloud services. In this paper, we survey CARS. First, we describe its benefits and capabilities through real-world applications. Second, we present a multilayer architecture of CARS by describing each layer's functionalities and responsibilities, as well as its interactions and interfaces with its upper and lower layers. Third, we discuss the sensing services models offered by CARS. Fourth, we discuss some popular commercial cloud platforms that have already been developed and deployed in recent years. Finally, we present and discuss major design requirements and challenges of CARS.