Reference platform for building ‘smart’ street lighting systems design

Introduction: Contemporary street light systems suffer from problems like inefficiency, power wastage, power pilferage, cumbersome maintenance and crimes on the highways due to stretches roads because to faulty street lights. Smart street light management systems address all of these issues. A significant portion of the national electricity production goes to street lighting. The existing street lighting systems world over are not very efficient and optimized. We can still find street lights switched on during day time. Imagine thousands of street lights consuming thousands of watts of electricity on highways wasting away precious electricity. It also reduces the usable life of the lamps. This gives us a substantial scope for improvement in the way street lighting systems operate today. The suggested approach in bringing about improved operation efficiency focuses on two aspects, namely, replacing existing lamps with LEDs lamps and making the street lights ‘smarter’. The purpose of this article is to explain one of the reference platform developed by STMicroelectronics for building such ‘smart’ street lighting systems. The transformation from classic street lighting system to a ‘smart’ street lighting is primarily due to the ability communicate. T...