Abstract
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), through wireless communications and the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, are the enabling keys for transforming traditional cities into smart cities, since they provide the core infrastructure behind public utilities and services. However, to be effective, IoT-based services could require different technologies and network topologies, even when addressing the same urban scenario. In this paper, we highlight this aspect and present two smart city testbeds developed in Italy. The first one concerns a smart infrastructure for public lighting and relies on a heterogeneous network using the IEEE 802.15.4 short-range communication technology, whereas the second one addresses smart-building applications and is based on the LoRa low-rate, long-range communication technology. The smart lighting scenario is discussed providing the technical details and the economic benefits of a large-scale (around 3000 light poles) flexible and modular implementation of a public lighting infrastructure, while the smart-building testbed is investigated, through measurement campaigns and simulations, assessing the coverage and the performance of the LoRa technology in a real urban scenario. Results show that a proper parameter setting is needed to cover large urban areas while maintaining the airtime sufficiently low to keep packet losses at satisfactory levels.
Highlights
Infrastructure aging, vehicular mobility, energy saving and personal safety are some of the issues that place serious strains on the economic sustainability of human activities, as well as the quality of life in modern urban areas
The former has been discussed showing that, thanks to the regular layout of street light poles, usually at short distance one to the other, a mesh topology using IEEE 802.15.4 at PHY and medium access control (MAC) layers could be adopted, jointly with the cellular network, to grant the connectivity to all of them, even in the case of thousands of nodes deployed in a wide area
Does the paper show the feasibility of such a solution but it gives an insight into the relevant benefits in terms of power and money savings (−76% and −73%, respectively, in the real world-case represented by the Italian municipality of Montechhiarugolo)
Summary
Infrastructure aging, vehicular mobility, energy saving and personal safety are some of the issues that place serious strains on the economic sustainability of human activities, as well as the quality of life in modern urban areas. The second testbed concerns with the implementation of a LPWAN in the framework of the RIGERS project, carried out with the support of the municipal council of Bologna, which is aimed at building-monitoring applications In this case, the adoption of the IEEE 802.15.4 would be highly critical because of its reduced coverage, coupled with the difficult propagation conditions of indoor environments (nodes are placed inside apartments, which has a detrimental impact on the connectivity owing to the limited link budget of the IEEE 802.15.4 technology). Apart from providing the technical details of the two testbeds and discussing their performance through experimental results and simulations, in this paper we want to highlight that, addressed at the same urban scenario, IoT-based services as those considered here could require different technologies and network topologies in order to be effective Owing to their differences (number of nodes, nodes layout, propagation conditions, etc.) the two testbeds are somehow orthogonal.
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