# Internet of Multimedia Things (IoMT): Opportunities, Challenges and Solutions
## 2 Future Research Directions  
Molecular communication exploits the transmission and reception of information encoded in molecules. Molecular communications have the potential of becoming the main technology for the execution of advanced medical solutions. The key research challenges in the molecular communication are the interoperability between molecular communication and the other networks, energy-efficient models and protocols for molecular communication, and implantation of reliability in the molecular communication.  
Billions of resource constraint devices will be connected in the IoT. The available spectrum is far from enough to support IoT communication systems. Optimal resource allocation for critical multimedia traffic is a key challenge for IoMT. The use of artificial intelligence (machine learning, deep learning) can improve the energy-efficient resource allocation in IoMT.  
Device-to-device (D2D) communication in LTE-A will establish direct communication with the device in its communication range. Potential advantages of D2D communication are increased network spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, reduced transmission delay, traffic offloaded base station, and less congestion in the cellular core network. IoMT can take the benefits of the advantages provided by D2D communication. Interference, radio resource allocation, power control, and QoE improvement for cellular users are the key research areas in D2D communication for IoMT.  
Figure 2: IoMT Applications.  
Energy Efficient Operation and Protocols_ are the key requirement of IoMT. Many multimedia traffic sources in IoMT may rely on battery-powered sources with limited energy and/or may not be easily accessible for recharging purposes. Similar to WSNs/IoT, the energy-efficient operation, protocols design (i.e., medium access control and routing protocols), and the need to optimize the network lifetime remains a critical challenge for IoMT. Based on the specific application and deployment environment, energy-efficient protocols can be designed for IoMT.  
The Internet of Multimedia Nano-Things (IoMNT) is defined as the interconnection of multimedia nano-devices with communication networks and the Internet. The potential applications of IoMNT are security, biomedical, defense, and industry. The main research challenges in IoMNT includes novel medium access control techniques, addressing schemes, neighbor discovery and routing schemes, QoS-aware cross-layer communication module and security solutions for the IoMNT.  
Multimedia-oriented IoT over vehicular networks is increasing drastically. Today, vehicles have the capability of supporting real-time acquisition and transmission of the multimedia traffic generated by the built-in IoT devices. However, due to high mobility, density, and random wireless channel conditions, the performance of the delivery of multimedia contents significantly reduces in vehicular networks. Rate adaptation, multimedia delivery over heterogeneous devices, robust video encoding, scalable, and timely delivery of multimedia contents are the key research challenges in IoMT over vehicular networks.