THE IoT
costly resources being spent on collecting under-filled waste containers while others are overflowing. A smart waste management system can monitor waste levels in containers and enable refuse collectors to optimise their routes for maximum efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In one real-life example, using smart technology for waste management cut costs by 83% while increasing recycling by 46%.
Also, with more people moving into cities, the ability to monitor noise and air pollution is vital. IoT-based monitoring systems can provide crucial data that not only oversees the well-being of city dwellers, but could also highlight potential pollution-related health issues well in advance of them becoming a problem.
Improving cities to benefit residents
The goals of implementing smart city technology, then, include enhancing the quality of life for residents, improving efficiency in many areas (including the use of city resources) and increasing preventive responses to service needs. Apart from the factors mentioned above, being able to gather, process, analyse and share data will also have a significant impact on the management and delivery of services relating to education, health, city finances and much more. In another example, a city that used smart technology to manage its solar power facilities improved the efficiency of operations staff considerably while boosting output to nearly 750,000 KW/h of clean power.
LoRa and the smart city
One of the biggest benefits of adopting LoRa devices and the LoRaWAN protocol in smart city environments is that their inherent simplicity, including ease of installation,
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keeps implementation costs to a minimum. For example, one gateway operates in a star network with sensors communicating directly to the gateway from a range of up to 30km, with sensors capable of being located indoors or outdoors (robust signalling can penetrate multiple buildings, even in dense urban areas). This means there is no need for the kind of complex coverage analysis that mesh network solutions require. Also, because of the longevity of battery- operated sensors, there is no need for the power source wiring required by GSM, LTE and WiFi.
Other features that make LoRa suited to smart city applications include its built-in AES-128 encryption for extra security; support for the LoRaWAN protocol by the LoRa Alliance, which ensures easy scalability; the use of a GPS-free geolocation technology that doesn’t need additional power; and the fact that LoRa operates in the unlicensed ISM
band, which means no or very low spectrum costs.
Yet more benefits include low deployment and operational costs when compared to emerging cellular-based solutions like LTE-M and NB-loT. Reduced costs are also achieved through the use of open network technology which enables smart city operatives to choose to connect with any number of competing network service providers – indeed, cities are able to deploy their own local municipal network which can host multiple applications while also leasing bandwidth to companies within the city who want to run their own applications. A scalable and low-cost IoT network needs to be the cornerstone of any smart city.
Semtech
www.semtech.com
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