CURRENT TRENDS IN INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) AND SMART TECHNOLOGIES: A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW

The rapid evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed traditional systems into
intelligent, interconnected smart environments. IoT, combined with emerging smart technologies
such as artificial intelligence (AI), edge computing, big data analytics, and cloud platforms, has
enabled innovative applications across healthcare, smart cities, industrial automation, agriculture,
and transportation. This review paper presents a comprehensive overview of current trends in
IoT and smart technologies, highlighting recent advancements in architectures, communication
protocols, data analytics, and security mechanisms. Furthermore, it discusses key challenges
including scalability, interoperability, privacy, and energy efficiency, and outlines future
research directions for sustainable and intelligent IoT ecosystems. The objective of this work is
to provide researchers and practitioners with a consolidated reference to understand the state of
the art and identify open research problems in the rapidly evolving IoT domain.