International Conference on Smart Systems and Inventive Technology (ICSSIT 2018)

IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP18P17-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-5873-4

Intelligent Energy Efficient Street Light Controlling

System based on IoT for Smart City
M. Caroline Viola Stella Mary G. Prince Devaraj
Department of IT, Francis Xavier Engineering College Department of IT, Francis Xavier Engineering College
Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu, India Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu, India
carolsam67@googlemail.com princedevaraj.g@gmail.com
T. Anto Theepak D. Joseph Pushparaj
Department of IT, Francis Xavier Engineering College Department of IT, Francis Xavier Engineering College
Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu, India Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu, India
theepak_a@yahoo.co.in er.joseph.raj @yahoo.co.in
J. Monica Esther
Department of IT, Francis Xavier Engineering College
Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu, India
evervictury@gmail.com

Abstract— In day to day life electricity has been an area of communication technologies, various services are enabled and
concern worldwide. There are not much sources for non- it makes them IoT-based. Installation of an IoT based system
renewable sources and most of the power generation stations, to all Lamp posts is though costly, the paybacks of them are
they are based on fuels that are conventional. In order make often not clear and they have to be quantified completely.
ourselves independent of these sources of energy, it is Therefore, an IoT augmented Lamp Posts are very highly
recommended that we proceed on to the new and renewable
necessary in municipalities, townships and cities for the
power sources like solar and wind. We can also make effective
utilization of the conventional and non-renewable sources for a development of new Smart cities and towns in this new era.
proper usage of electricity, so that we do not run into shortage of
power. Street lights are one of the consumable sources of LITERATURE SURVEY
electricity that are essential parts of the day to day life. The Xue Huaqiang et al(2015), analyzed wireless
conventional street lighting systems require manual operation
communication of Light Emitting Diode (LED) street lamps
and also consume a large amount of power as they are in
powered on condition from evening to early morning. The
conventional manual operated street lighting systems consume a
large amount of power, need manual operators and heavy cost on
installation which has been a great disadvantage and an area of
major concern. The costs of energy can be reduced immediately
to 35% through intelligent on/off mechanism and targeted
progressive dimming and organized way of power consumption.
We can reduce the overall consumption costs up to 42% by
proper maintenance.
The proposed approach uses an energy effective approach
that controls the street lights by automatically switching them
when there are people or vehicles around the post when it is
dark. The smart street lighting system is so flexible and it consists
of various sensors and a controller which make it as an intelligent
street lighting system. Thus it overcomes the disadvantages of the
conventional Street Lighting System.

Index Terms— Smart Street Lighting System, IoT, Intelligent

On/Off Switching, Progressive Dimming.

I. INTRODUCTION Fig. 1 The Components of a Smart Street Light System

T HE World’s population has been increasing rapidly in the

cities over the past century. Intelligent and sustainable
development therefore plays an important role in the
development of a city and towns. The Street lighting system is
available in all public roads and streets as a conventional
service. If the street lamp posts are furnished with sensors and
based on Zig-Bee protocol. It works with 2.4GHz, and designs
a seamless wireless network node of LED street lamps[1].
Huaqiu et al(2015) used the intelligent control system pooled
with luminance and temperature sensing which will be the
future direction of new development[2]. Chun-ling Fan et al

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 International Conference on Smart Systems and Inventive Technology (ICSSIT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP18P17-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-5873-4
(2011), described the growth of the street lighting system
technology, with the deficiencies of the current technology. A
method of the Zig- Bee primarily based on the
wireless sensing element networking LED street lighting
system is imparted, and an LED street light energy-
saving system is revealed[3]. Zhixiong Ke et al (2016) studied
a wireless street light control system supported by ZigBee
network that introduces an on/off control, power adjustment
and fault monitoring. The system gets the street lights
parameters and realizes remote monitoring through ZigBee
communication[4].
Florian Knobloch et al (2015) suggested a new
deterministic model to mechanizing the street illumination
depending on the traffic needs for improving energy efficiency
Fig. 2 The Structure of a Smart Street Light System
[5]. The light on demand (LOD) system integrates the traffic
velocity into the deterministic model and produces results that
are more significant to real time traffic needs while
guaranteeing safety and security. S. V. Viraktamath et al
(2011) proposed a system which presented us a power saving
mechanism for street lights by means of wireless
communication [6]. It is a low cost, remote controlling and
observing of the street-lights. It provides an effective way to
save energy by thwarting unnecessary consumption of
electricity, instigated due to manual switching or lighting of
street-lights when it is not essential.
Chen-Wei Yang et al(2014) studied a simulation of vehicle
and pedestrian traffic is interfaced to a distributed street
lighting system based on the IEC 61499 standard, in order to
compute the energy equivalent potential of a street lighting
automation system that feats real-time sensing information of
individual road users while following the traffic safety related
requirements for road lighting[7]. Yusaku Fujii et al(2013),
presented the consumption of photovoltaic power applied in
LED street lighting and an intellectual lighting system is
developed. In addition to that a Zig bee based wireless
communication module has been established for potential
monitoring of the LED street lights for future work [8].
Arthi et al(2017) has utilized a method for adjusting street
light illumination by using sensor at minimum electrical
978-1-5386-5873-4/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
energy consumption. When object’s presence is detected,
street lights spark at their brightest mode, else they stay in the
faint mode during night time. Internet of things (IOT) is used
to envisage the real time updates of street processing and
alerting the changes occur[9]. Sunayana S. Badgelwar et
al(2017), proposes the system where street light changed to
ON state in the evening before the sun goes down and they are
Fig. 3 Coverage Radius R
switched off in the morning after sun rises and when there is
enough light on the street[10]. This leads to decrease of energy
consumption. In this system the movement of vehicle as well
as human is detected on highways to switch on a portion of
street light ahead of it and switch off the trailing lights.
METHODOLOGY
Figure 1 highlights the components used in the smart street
light system for smart city. The first module is Lamp unit and
it consists of sensor which is used to identify the motion and
brightness of the LED device, controller and communication
device. If sensor detects the motion, light will be turned ON
condition else, Light will be turned OFF condition.
The next unit is the Sensor unit available and it consists of
the motion sensor, a controller and a communication device.
Whenever motion is detected it sends message to the other
units. The sensor unit has to be placed in many locations, such
as, at house gates, at house fences, electric poles, inside and
outside of the door to make sure that every light in the street
turns on before pedestrians notice that. The next unit is the
Access Point and it consists of a controller and communication
device. This unit is used in the case that the distance between
the sensor units and lamp units are too large to communicate
with each other.
Zigbee can be used as the communication devices.In
today’s communication world there are huge high data rate
communication standards, which are available, but none meet
the needs od sensors and control devices. These huge high
data rate communication standards require low-energy
consumption and low latency for even smaller bandwidths.
The Zigbee technology that has been used is a wireless
technology with low cost and lower power consumption rates,
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 International Conference on Smart Systems and Inventive Technology (ICSSIT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP18P17-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-5873-4

which makes it well suited for Smart Street Light Automation. of the street lights. This saves the energy consumption of the
It is used for monitoring the Street Lights where it covers 10 – lights in a city and this proposed model will help the energy
100 meters within the range. The Zigbee communication saving for a smart city.
system module is simpler and low cost that the other wireless
sensor networks like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. DISCUSSIONS AND RESULTS
Figure 2 shows the Structure of a Smart Street Light The energy efficiency has been improved than the
system. conventional Street Light System where the Street lights will
be in ON condition throughout the night. It also ensures traffic
It can also be operated in different modes, thereby safety and also prevents crime during night-time walking. This
conserving the battery power. It can also be extended by using will help our city to be a Smart City in the near future. The
routers and make many nodes to participate with each other in usage of power electronics has been increasing exponentially
a wide area network.Thus the Zigbee acts as a communication in various segments of the human life. The components that
device with power-saving features and for short distances, have been used in the experimentation like sensors have
Considering the position information, each of the controller become necessary elements in the day to day walk of our life.
uses a plural address, that may correspond to the adjacent This methodology proves to be a good way of energy
different networks. This Smart Street Light System, turns on conservation. It combines the methodology of switching on
the lights before pedestrians come and dims them as they pass the lights, dimming the lights as well as switching off the
by and after some time, if there is no one detected then it lights thereby conserving a minimal amount of power. Despite
switches it off. Figure 2 explains the process of smart street the costs are initially high, there is always a feasible option for
light system. It helps to turn on the light, if it detect the motion reduced power consumption in the days there after. The
otherwise it will be reduce the brightness to save the power operational costs are minimal and the energy saving
and this was demonstrated in figure 2. conservation is very good.
The light sensing units that is present in the Lamp Post,
sense the intensity of light and give response to the
CONCLUSIONS
microcontroller, which in turn initiates the switching unit
comprising of the power relays, accordingly[11]. Pedestrians The proposed method concludes that the Smart Intelligent
or vehicles require some time to leave the lamps’s sensing Street Lighting system helps in providing minimal power
area of the n-th street lamp to the (n+1)-th street lamp[12]. consumption in towns, municipalities and cities. It can be
Hence, after the (n+1)-th street lamp receiving the message, monitored through Thingspeak cloud. Maintenance cost is also
and the (n+1)-th street lamp adjusts its own brightness with a
delay, e.g., t seconds[12].
Various other sensors are also incorporated in the sensor
unit. The LDR (Light Dependent resistor) is used for detecting
the light. During the day, the resistance is low and the relay
gets switched off and hence even if pedestrians cross, the
lights does not get switched on. When it is dim in the night,
the resistance is high in the LDR and the relay gets switched
on and hence the light switches on when pedestrians pass by.
The module is linked with a Thingspeak cloud to monitor if all
street lights are in proper working condition and also to
monitor the on/dim/off of the LED lights. A Wifi module
ESP8266 is interfaced with the microcontroller to connect (a)
with the cloud environment. In the thingspeak a new channel
has been created to monitor this. Once the new channel is
created an API Key is generated by the Thingspeak cloud,
which may be used to integrate with the microcontroller. The
Thingspeak cloud provides the data aggregation and
Analytics, to know the amount of energy conserved in this
environment after the implementation of the new proposed
architecture.
The coverage radius of the lamp is 5 meters and if the
pedestrian comes within the radius of R = 5 meters, then the
zigbee module sends a signal to the controller and the light
gets switched on as in Figure 3, if it is night as the relay will (b)
be open only in the night, since the LDR resistance will be Fig. 4Coverage of light in case of (a) Pedestrians walking or vehicles
high only during night time. Figure 4 shows the coverage of crossing the lights (b) Vehicles crossing the night
light as pedestrians pass by and vehicles pass by in the vicinity minimal and the reduced power consumption in today’s era

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 International Conference on Smart Systems and Inventive Technology (ICSSIT 2018)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP18P17-ART; ISBN:978-1-5386-5873-4
makes it an immediate call at this hour. Since saving of energy
plays an important role, this proposed method provides a good
solution for reduced power consumption.
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