Artificial Intelligence, Wireless Lighting and Smart Cities

In India, about 31% of the population live in urban areas (Census 2011) and with increasing urbanisation, 40% of the population is expected to shift to urban areas. This is bound to put more pressure on the cities’ infrastructure and hence it must be upgraded to ensure infrastructure’s sustainability and efficiency. Thus, in the year 2015, the Government of India (GoI) came up with the Smart Cities project. These cities are expected to raise the standard of infrastructure in our country and introduce technologically advanced cities.

While technology acts as a facilitator for smart cities, sustainability is the major driving force behind the initiative. These cities aim to solve the negative effects of urbanization, such as traffic jam, energy distribution, crime, consumption of resources, etc. In our country, lighting constitutes about 18% of the total electricity consumption. To facilitate sustainability, it is important to deploy solutions which offer operational savings and are beneficial for the overall ecosystem. Using advanced lighting technologies such as connected lighting, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), 5G etc. smart cities are set to strengthen our cities’ existing infrastructure, make them safer, and more sustainable while simultaneously easing administration for civic authorities. Smart lighting has been identified as one of the first ready-to-implement technologies for smart cities. Lamp posts, streetlights etc. have been recognized as the ideal infrastructure to install smart city systems. When mounted with sensors, these posts can be used for monitoring and providing useful data for functioning of a smart city. While streetlights in cities are essential, they end up consuming a lot of energy. The solution lies in usage of smart LED lighting. When upgraded to LEDs, street lighting bills go down by 45-70% as LEDs consume less electricity than traditional incandescent lamps hence reducing carbon emissions. LED chips have a much higher operating lifetime (approximately 50,000 hours.) Also, LEDs are environment friendly since they release zero mercury toxins as opposed to the previous generation of lighting i.e. Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs.)

There is immense potential for a lighting system to serve as an IoTplatform in a smart city. With the aid of IoT and AI, an individual luminaire will provide illumination according to the time of the day and weather conditions. Other advantages include real time energy metering, ease of maintenance, report generation help to analyse electricity usage, traffic control and management, parking spaces allocation, commute information, etc. The benefits of such integrated lighting solutions will thus include a significant amount of electricity and energy savings.

The basic functions of connected street lighting such as remote control, dimming can be achieved through low-cost connectivity such as RF Mesh or PLC. More sophisticated lighting features will require more secure cellular networks with lower latency i.e. 4G LTE or 5G. Smart street lighting equipped with faster networks can extend a platform for many advanced features such as WIFI connectivity, gunshot detection, air quality monitoring, traffic control and management, smart parking, etc.

It is safe to say that the future of lighting is set towards smart lighting trends to develop cities that will be more eco-friendly, safe, and sustainable. In a smart city, lighting will go beyond the task of illumination and offer many benefits while functioning as the nervous system of the entire city. As these cities grow and volume, an infrastructure of security enabled with sensors and cameras help authorities monitor the city remotely and hence reduce the risk of threats and accidents. This will make the city a better place to live in, making the city dwellers feel much safer.

- Prag Bhatnagar Senior Vice President, Havells India Limited