To develop electric vehicles is a way to reduce fossil fuel and alleviate air pollution. But a large scale of electric vehicles will bring a serious impact on the stability of grid, such as the peak widening, voltage deviations and the increase of energy losses. It is well known that it will cost much for the extension and renovation of the grid while smart charging can efficiently solve this problem without radical transformation of the grid. Smart charging of electric vehicles can not only bring economic benefits to the power company, but also benefit customers of electric vehicles. In this paper, the two main control architectures of smart charging, the centralized control and the decentralized control were reviewed. The research of centralized control is based on various targets, such as minimizing operating costs, minimizing energy loss or minimizing load variance. And the decentralized control mainly depends on the price mechanism to motivate users to change their charging behaviours. Finally, the integration of electric vehicles and renewable energy were introduced and the constructions of network communication devices were described.