# Open Radio Access Networks For Smart IoT Systems: State of Art and Future Directions
## 3 O-RAN in Smart IoT Systems
### Smart Energy Systems  
The smart energy system, such as the smart grid, involves integrating modern communication and information technologies with the energy sector to create a more interconnected, efficient, and sustainable energy ecosystem by applying digital solutions to energy generation, distribution, consumption, and management. The smart energy system leverages data analytics, automation, and real-time communication to optimize energy systems, enhance grid stability, and support the integration of distributed energy resources (DER). Some candidate systems in smart energy systems include smart grids, energy management and optimization systems, renewable energy integration mechanisms, demand response programs, microgrids, and energy trading schemes. With 5G and beyond 5G (B5G) networks, the smart energy system targets the revolution of the entire energy sector by supporting efficient, flexible, and responsive energy systems. This can be achieved in several ways. Starting from ensuring low latency, facilitating real-time communication between various energy assets, sensors, and control systems to maintain grid stability, respond quickly to supply and demand fluctuations, and ensure the reliability of energy services to providing the massive connectivity required by the smart energy system to connect a wide range of devices, like the smart meters, sensors, DERs, energy storage systems, and electric vehicles as well as providing the necessary bandwidth required for transmitting large amounts of data in real-time, especially for the essential applications requiring high-resolution energy consumption monitoring, real-time analytics, and video surveillance of energy infrastructures [84]. When the O-RAN concept is extended to smart energy applications, it will yield more flexibly connected, efficient, and collaborative energy systems supporting enhanced communication, improved management of DERs, better grid stability, and increased flexibility in adapting to evolving energy demands. For example, [PERSON] et al. [61] presented 5G as a promising enabler of smart energy systems and supported that with an O-RAN-based beamforming case study. Similarly, [PERSON] et al. [85] proposed how 5G will support the next generation's smart distributed state estimation of PMU-based WAMS in near-real-time. **Takeaways from smart energy systems:** Supported by Table 5, the reviewed efforts in smart energy systems covered \(Y_{1}\) and \(Y_{2}\), while \(Y_{3}\) and \(Y_{4}\) remain open for further investigation. However, despite O-RAN's achievements in smart energy systems, there is a need for more real-time operating ideas to maintain the integrity of the operating environment's data, minimizing interference in the transmission medium, which will improve the system's resilience to threats. Finally, as depicted in Table 6, the O-RAN-IoT convergence helps to minimize IoT devices' energy consumption. In particular, computation tasks can be offloaded from the participating nodes to the network edge in the representative CPS (smart transportation, smart manufacturing, smart energy grids, smart healthcare, etc). The network edge can