Lighting-Enabled Smart City Applications and Ecosystems based on the IoT

Abstract

The Internet of Things is poised to transform lighting from a simple illumination source, which is most often taken for granted, into a smart and data-rich infrastructure for the cities. To this end, we propose the Lighting-Enabled Smart City APplications and Ecosystems (LENSCAPEs) framework. LENSCAPEs involve i) city-wide wireless Outdoor Lighting Networks (OLNs), to connect the streetlights using either mesh, or cellular networks, ii) sensors, to collect heterogeneous spatio-temporal data about the city, iii) controllers, to actuate physical processes, such as lighting, and iv) other cloud-based applications, to process the data that is collected and disseminated by the city-wide wireless sensor network. Mesh-based networking technologies for OLNs, such as IEEE 802.15.4g, are evaluated by simulating network capacity and comparing with cellular technologies. Light-on-Demand (LoD), an adaptive energy-efficient lighting system based on wireless mesh networks, is presented as the primary application of small-scale OLNs. We also present a case study on a real-world deployment of LoD, which resulted in 92% energy savings over conventional luminaires.