The lighting industry is now ushering towards a new wave of revolution called smart street lighting. It plays an integral role in urban lighting infrastructure. This was long overdue as the lights needed to be more energy-efficient and sustainable. However, now it goes beyond replacing the inefficient high-intensity discharge (HID), metal halide (MH) lights and high-pressure sodium (HPS). Furthermore, smart street lighting systems have the capability of optimum light output that meets the road safety and security lighting requirement.
To begin with, the Internet of Things is a network of uniquely identifiable physical objects that is interconnected to attain control and information exchange through an information carrier that is based on standard communication protocols. IoT allows an array of devices to build seamless communication and contextual interactions remotely across the existing network. In addition to that, you can enable all the physical objects to work as uniquely addressable nodes and add network functions to improve and extend their functionality.
When you merge IoT connectivity with outdoor street lighting, it quantifies the advantages of sustainable development. The amalgamation of intelligent sensing, data analysis capabilities, network communicating, allows the municipal authorities to monitor and control the street lighting systems. With IoT based lighting technology at bay, it resolves the scalability issues to manage several street light facilities. This is achieved by aggregating the data generated by IoT street lights and then enhancing urban lighting services, reducing operational costs and maximizing energy savings.
IoT street light systems use long, medium, and short-range networks communication to thrive. There are three kinds of communication systems that are available for implementing network connectivity in a smart streetlight system:
1. The first one, power line communication. It modulates communication signals over power distribution that already exists
2. Then comes the broadband power line (BPL), in which the data signals are modulated onto carriers in the megahertz range.
3. Last but not least, wireless communication. It is implemented to utilize the radio frequency modules.
It goes without saying that wireless technology plays a vital role in the implementation of IoT networked intelligent street lighting systems.
With the invention of new technologies for outdoor street lighting, our lives have become a lot safer. Moreover, smart & connected outdoor lighting has now become the norm in most parts of the world. It is a core piece of urban and rural infrastructure.
