Robust Cellular Connection-Based Smart Street Lighting System for Supporting Strategic IoT Smart City Applications

Abstract

Abstract The Smart city incorporates information and communication technology (ICT) and the internet of things (IoT) services to enhance the efficiency of the resident-related city operations and services. Smart lighting systems are evolving as an essential infrastructure that can support a wide range of existing and future smart city application. Each smart streetlight is transformed into multi-sensor-equipped smart node. Such a sensor (hub) node capable of capturing and transmitting/receiving real-time data (digitally controllable nodes). A smart streetlight has sensors embedded and connected to the cloud. Globally, many cities are in the replacement phase of the legacy streetlights by low-power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to reduce energy utilization, expenses, and carbon footprint. In addition, some of these cities are installing intelligent controls with these smart streetlights, enabling a robust smart connected outdoor lighting network that can serve as the foundation for future smart city infrastructure. A smart connected lighting network employs sensors, smart light controller (LC), communication network, data collection, and cloud software to enable remote control and monitoring of LED streetlights over the Internet. This paper reports the performance of commercial point-to point (P2P) 4G long term evolution (LTE) cellular networks when used to provide robust connectivity among massive number of smart streetlight hub nodes and the cloud. Each smart streetlight hub node is assumed to be running simultaneously few basic lighting control services as well as smart city applications. Smart city applications range from strategic applications to relaxed latency applications. Strategic applications necessitate strict latency and reliability requirements, particularly, HD IP video surveillance cameras, however, the relaxed latency applications do not demand such strict requirements, for instance, the smart meter applications. The Control Center (CC) located at the cloud is the lighting infrastructure management module, which commands/ configures each streetlight (e.g., light-on, light-off, dimming) and monitors the infrastructure operating conditions for maintenance functions. The information exchange between the CC and each streetlight takes place via a communication network. This network must provide adequate coverage throughout the whole area where the streetlights are deployed. A smart LED has embedded sensors along with smart LC (to activate the commands received by the CC and transmit the required information) and connectivity to the cloud.