bSlight: Battery-Less Energy Autonomous Street Light Management System for Smart City

Abstract

Public lighting is a ubiquitous utility in cities to ensure the safety of people. In addition to playing a significant role in amending the comfort and safety of cities, street lighting causes substantial financial burden on governments to maintain its operation. Smart Light Emitting Diode (LED) street light system has become a prominent alternative to conventional street lighting systems with the involvement of Internet of Things (IoT). In this manuscript, a supercapacitor based smart street management system with energy autonomous capability has been proposed. It works in real-time and as an energy-saving alternative to prevent unnecessary electricity consumption of the street light. The average current consumption and power consumption of the system are 619.14 $\mu$ A and 2.022 mW, respectively. Three charging schemes have been investigated to find the optimized topology to harvest energy. The proposed device harvests energy from ambient sunlight and artificial light using a solar cell of 64 mm x 37 mm x 0.22 mm with maximum output power of 66 mW. LoRaWAN has been incorporated for communication, with a communication range of 761 m in real-world testbed. The operation characteristics and performance evaluation has been done based on implementing the system in field to ensure seamless operation.