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How wireless mesh networking is helping the City of London become a smart city


With its smart lighng network of more than 15,000 luminaires, and support for other applicaons like trac management, environmental and air quality monitoring, the City of London is becoming a smart city. Giles Radford, Head of Highway Construcon and Infrastructure at City of London and Phil Beecher, president at Wi SUN Alliance, which is helping transform the City with its mesh networking technology, discuss the challenges and opportunies.


ncreasingly, we are seeing smart city initiatives being rolled out around the world to help meet environmental targets and reduce energy costs of cities, as well as cope with increased


urbanisation. The idea of a smart city is still evolving, but in simple terms means creating a communications network where connected devices and applications can help improve the lives of citizens, whether that’s through reduced energy consumption and pollution, greater safety or better transport systems.


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Converting legacy streetlights, many of which have been in place for decades, into a smart lighting network has become an important part of this digital transformation process, and in many cases, the ‘entry point’ for city developers and local authorities when designing and planning a smart city. This provides the wireless communications infrastructure for other citywide smart applications and services, like traffic


management, parking and electric vehicle charging, and sensors for air quality monitoring and even waste collection.


IoT Analytics, the market analyst firm, estimates that the connected streetlights market will surpass $3.6 billion in 2023, with growth of 21%. We are certainly starting to see more deployments, more interconnectivity and much more collaboration between utilities and other service providers, city developers and governments.


Cities like Miami in Florida top the table of smart lighting rollouts, with its half a million connected streetlights helping to reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, while Paris has rolled out 280,000 connected


32 BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER MARCH 2021


streetlights across the city, delivering 70% savings on annual streetlight energy costs.


Both projects are supported by Wi- SUN Alliance wireless mesh technology, just two of many around the world, including the City of London where the Wi-SUN network supports 15,000 connected streetlights, as well as other applications for environmental monitoring and monitoring the presence of lifebelts on the river. One of the most important financial hubs in the world, the City of London is unique and challenging in equal measures. Occupying just over a square mile, it has a large population of around 450,000 workers in the daytime, but only 9,400 permanent residents at night. Famous landmarks and tourist attractions like St Paul’s Cathedral, however, can boost this number to as many as a million people at the busiest times. Managing and moving this number of people within the medieval footprint of the City can be challenging when it comes to creating a vibrant and safe space. The smart street lighting project has been a crucial part of this, designed to balance the need for public safety with lighting up some of the most iconic landmarks and creating the right ambience for visitors. But it’s much more than this. The lighting stock of around 30+ years, which was reaching the end of its useful life, and an old Cyclo system that basically allowed the system to be turned on and off, meant it was no longer fit for purpose. As well as ageing stock, there were about 45 different types of lights that needed standardising. They were also all on unmetered power supplies, which required a lot of effort to rationalise when it came to billing.


Like so many other cities, the City of London was also struggling with rising energy costs – plus a carbon


PhilBeecher


GilesRadford


tax introduced by the UK Government – driving the need to reduce energy consumption and save money. In fact, since installing the streetlights between 2018 and 2020, the City has already saved 60% on its energy costs.


But unlike many other cities, what makes London so special is what also makes it so challenging for new technology projects. Admired for its unique architecture, the City’s mix of old and new buildings – many constructed of glass and steel – causes problems for traditional communications technologies, like cellular, that struggle to reach into the narrow streets and urban canyons between skyscrapers. Urban Control, a systems integrator for smart cities, tested the full capabilities of the Wi-SUN Field Area Networks (FAN) wireless mesh technology during the pilot phase to ensure it could provide coverage and resilience even in the densest, narrowest parts of the City. The team later worked with Wi-SUN partner Itron for the full deployment. Wireless mesh is fast becoming the glue that holds smart cities together thanks to a network topology that enables devices to connect with multiple others nearby, so is inherently


resilient. If interference or device failure causes a communication problem on one route, traffic can still get through using another route through the mesh. Mesh also mean fast


implementation, essential for city planners and local authorities. Using a self-forming network can speed up initial deployments and means additional devices can be deployed easily onto the network.


The City of London smart lighting initiative, which is now completed, is only the start of its evolution into a smart city with plans to deliver additional applications and services. Based on open standards, Wi-SUN FAN technology provides full interoperability for third party product vendors, opening up the potential to implement a range of devices and sensors across the network – traffic monitoring, air quality sensors, occupancy sensing, waste management and noise monitoring are all being explored.


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