International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET)

Volume 9, Issue 9, September 2018, pp. 1300–1308, Article ID: IJMET_09_09_142

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ISSN Print: 0976-6340 and ISSN Online: 0976-6359

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ENERGY EFFICIENT AUTOMATIC STREET

LIGHT INTENSITY CONTROL BY INFRARED
SENSORS AND LED
Nurulazlina Ramli 1, Sarfaraz Ahmed and Anis Fariza Md Pazil
Center of Communication & Intelligent Systems (CCIS), Faculty of Engineering and the Built
Environment, SEGi University Kota Damansara, Selangor, Malaysia

Najwa Mohd Faudzi

Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FKE), Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Pulau Pinang,
Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

ABSTRACT
This paper presents an energy efficient automatic street light, which the intensity
is controlled by infrared (IR) sensors and LED. The main objective of this project is to
design and execute a highway street light system that is efficient with the help of IR
sensors used to control the light intensity. The street light system using LED as the
street lamp was integrated withIR sensor, which is used to detect the vehicles and
switch the street lamp to the maximum intensity, otherwise the lamp would be at
minimum intensity. The final prototype was constructed and the calculation results
were analyzed. The comparison results between the constructive method and the
adaptive method shows that the adaptive method implemented in this project has
achieved a reduction in energy consumption around 80%.
Keywords: energy efficient, infrared sensor, intensity, LED, street light
Cite this Article: Nurulazlina Ramli, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Najwa Mohd Faudzi and Anis
Fariza Md Pazil, Energy Efficient Automatic Street Light Intensity Control by Infrared
Sensors and Led, International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology,
9(9), 2018, pp. 1300–1308.
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1. INTRODUCTION
Street lightis essential in all countries as it provides safety and guidance to the citizens across
the vast regions in the country. People always rely on the street light to provide them clear
view and give them a sense of direction. It also provides safety to the citizens and gives social
and economic benefits such as greatly reducing car accidents at night and economic loss and
providing a sense of self-awareness and personal security to the people. In addition, it also
helps to smooth the traffic flow and provides business activities to be carried out at night.

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 Energy Efficient Automatic Street Light Intensity Control by Infrared Sensors and Led

It is almost impossible and very risky to drive on the highways at nights without the
provision of proper lighting. Therefore, the street lights must be designed in such a way to
minimize the glare and able to enhance the color recognition to meet people’s visual needs. At
present, the street lighting industry is growing rapidly due to the construction of new roads
and massive development in the cities. One of the main concerns today is Automation, energy
consumption and cost-effectiveness in the field of technology related to electrical and
electronics. The main aim of automation is to reduce the man power through the use of
intelligent systems. Energy saving will always remain the main concern as the source of
power (i.e. Thermal and Hydro) are getting diminished due to various reasons. To control and
maintain complex street lighting systems more economically, various street light control
systems are developed.
The purpose of these systems is to easily control and reduce the energy consumption of
public lighting systems with the help of different technologies. The existing system being
used for street lighting is High Pressure Sodium lamps (HPS). HPS is presently being used in
urban areas on the highway and on the streets. HPS is based on the principle of gas discharge,
thus its intensity is not being controlled by any voltage reduction method as the discharge
path is broken. The disadvantages of the present system are it consumes more energy as well
as dissipates high power as a result of heating up [1].
The proposed system utilizes the latest technology for the sources of light using LED
lamps instead of the High Pressure Sodium Lamps (HPS) being vastly used in street lights as
of today. The reason for the preference of LED lamps instead of HPS is due to its various
advantages over it such as energy saving due to high current luminous efficiency, low
maintenance cost, high color rendering index, swift start up speed and controllable intensity
[2]. Infrared red sensors are to be used for the detection of vehicles on the highway.
Various researchers have proposed system based on street lighting enhancement. For
example in [3], an algorithm was designed in which street light brightness was controlled by
the changing seasons. A timer was used to dim the lights during the time of less traffic hours
as a lot of energy is wasted on inefficient street lighting every year [4]. Another option for
low power consumption was to use the internet connection. It also suggested with the help of
ZigBee radio based device on each of the lamppost the signal could be send to control it from
the SSL server via multi-hop routing [5].
Different researchers used different kinds of sensor for the purpose of detection. Photo
sensors were used to detect the walking person in the corridor and to control the lighting in
it[6].Other system proposed the use of temperature-humidity sensor to monitor the
surroundings temperature as well as control the street lights respectively[7]. In another
example piezoelectric sensor were installed on the road so as to convert the pressure exerted
on it by vehicle and convert it into electrical energy, this electrical energy will be used to
power up the street lights [8].
Nowadays the cost of electricity keep going higher and there is a need to implement
energy saving systems wherever necessary. This can be seen more effectively in the case of
street lights. Street lights cover up most parts of the highway roads in a city. Therefore the
main objectives of this project is todesign and execute a highway street light system that is
cost efficient and energy saving at the same time with the help of infrared(IR) sensors used
for light intensity control. The second objective is to compare the energy saving and the
efficiency between the conventional system (street light system used nowadays) and adaptive
method (the system proposed in this project).

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 Nurulazlina Ramli, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Najwa Mohd Faudzi and Anis Fariza Md Pazil

2. METHODOLOGY
This section will be divided into 3 parts: hardware, software and final prototype. The
hardware part include some explanation on microcontroller Arduino, IRsensor and LED,
while the software part briefly elaborates on Arduino IDE 1.8.2, Pulse Width Modulation
(PWM) and Analog Write function.

2.1. Hardware
In this project Arduino UNO Rev3 as shown in Figure-1has been used to program the circuit.
The required coding is uploaded into the Arduino to get the desired operation of the
circuit.Arduino is a platform used to build projects related to electronics. The Arduino consist
of two things namely a programmable circuit board which is often called a microcontroller
and software called Arduino IDE, which runs on the PC and the required coding can be
uploaded onto the Arduino board using USB cable. Moreover,Arduino provides a more
accessible package by breaking down the functions of a microcontroller into a standard form.

Figure 1 Arduino UNO

An IR Sensor FC-51 as shown in Figure.2comes with a receiver and transmitter, which is
used to detect the presence of vehicles. An infrared transmitter is used to send an infrared
signal of certain frequency which is compatible with the infrared receiver with the aim to
detect the vehicles passing by the street light.

Figure 2 IR Sensor FC-51

The use of LED technology in street lighting provides a wide variety of unique benefits
but researches shows that the cities are more interested in it cost reduction promise for street
lighting rather that its implementation or performance issues. There are many advantages of
LED. A few of them are its compact size also its high durability and shock-resistance. It has
lower operating cost. It has various control options and no burn out.

2.2. Software
By usingArduino, hundreds of different devices can be connected and controlled, and the
software can be written to fulfill the requirements to create a new intelligent device. The
Arduino IDE is the free software used to write the coding in this project.

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 Energy Efficient Automatic Street Light Intensity Control by Infrared Sensors and Led

PWM is a technique in Arduino coding to obtain analog results with the help of digital
means. A digital signal is a square wave, where it can be toggled ON (5 Volts) or OFF (0
Volts). The total duration of this “ON time” is called the pulse width. To get a varying analog
values or a varying voltage in this project the pulse width is modulated.
The AnalogWritefunction is used to assign an analog value to a pin. This function can be
used to light up an LED at varying brightness. The AnalogWrite function works on certain
digital pins which have this symbol “~” in them. In the case of Arduino it works on pin 11,
10, 9, 6, 5 and 3 only. The AnalogWrite has a value between 0 – 255 which means a voltage
of 0 – 5 Volts can be applied to the LED. This function is used ahead in the prototype for the
maximum and minimum intensity of LED.

2.3. Final Prototype

This section discusses the final prototype model assembled and its working principle to fulfill
the highlighted objectives. From Figure 3, it can be seen that the final prototype was made
keeping in mind the real life scenario. The road was made with the usage of a cardboard and
white tape was used to mark the lining on the road. The street lights were labeled 1 st, 2nd, 3rd
till 8th starting from the left hand side.

Figure 3 Final prototype

The street lights were made with the help of papers to make them look as real as possible
as illustrated in Figure 4. The LED was fixed on top of the street light pole while the wiring
for the LED was passed through the inside of the pole of street light. A total of eight street
lights were placed with a distance of 5cm between them. One wire of the LED was connected
to the GND of the Arduino while the other was connected to the digital pin of the Arduino.
The first two street lights (LEDs) were connected to the ~11 pin of the Arduino, the 3 rd and 4th
lights were connected to the ~10 pin, 5 th and 6th street lights to the ~6 pin and the last two
lights to the ~5 pin.

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 Nurulazlina Ramli, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Najwa Mohd Faudzi and Anis Fariza Md Pazil

Figure 4 Street lights and their labeling

A total of fourIR Sensors were used to detect the presence of a vehicle. These IR Sensors
were placed after each two street lights with a distance of 10cm apart. All the sensors
havethree pins. The GND pin was grounded and the Vcc pin was connected to the 5V pin of
Arduino for all sensors, while the 3rd pin of each sensors was connected to A0, A1, A2 and
A3 pins of the Arduino respectively. Each IR Sensor was designed to control two street lights
as shown in Figure 5 in order to avoid excessive use of sensors and make it more cost-
effective.

Figure 5 Single IR sensor controlling two LEDs

All the wiring of the street lights and IR Sensor went through the back of the cardboard
into the Arduino and breadboard as shown in Figure 6. A USB cable was connected to the
laptop from the Arduino to start the working of the prototype system.

Figure 6 Connections on the breadboard and Arduino for prototype

3. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

The intensity of LED is controlled by PWM, where an Analog Write acts as a scale to
describe the voltage in the Arduino language. The Analog Write value can be any number
between 0 – 255 which corresponds to 0 – 5V in the real life. The 0 and 255 value of Analog
Write correspond to 0V and 5V respectively. In order to convert the Analog Write value to the
real life voltage value, a graph of Analog Write versus Voltage as shown in Figure 7 was
plotted. From the graph, the Eqn. (1) was obtained, which can be used to calculate the real life

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 Energy Efficient Automatic Street Light Intensity Control by Infrared Sensors and Led

voltage value with respect to the analog write value. Once the voltage is obtained, the power
and the energy dissipated can be calculated using Eqn. (2) and (3) respectively.

(1)

(2)

(3)
Voltage vs Analog Write Value

3
Voltage (V)

0
0 50 100 150 200 250

Analog Write Value

Figure 7 Graph of Voltage vs Analog Write Value

The operation of the proposed street light was analyzed in two different cases, where case
1 is when there is no vehicle present, while case 2 is when vehicles are present.

3.1. Case 1: When IR sensor detects no vehicle

In this case, when there is no vehicle on the road, the sensor does not detect anything and
hence no output is sent back to the Arduino. So the LED continues to glow at minimum
brightness according to the coding in the Arduino as illustrated in Figure 8.The special
attribute here is that the LED continues to glow at very low brightness with AnalogWrite
value of 30. This is achieved by sending a PWM signal to the LED pin. The voltage level can
be set by varying the value of the PWM signals.
AnalogWrite value across LED = 30
Current across LED = 20mA

Figure 8 Street lights at minimum intensity when no vehicles are present

3.2. Case 2: When IR sensor detects a vehicle

In this case, when there is a vehicle present on the road, the sensor detects the vehicle and
sends an output signal back to the Arduino. The Arduino processes this signal and sends a

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 Nurulazlina Ramli, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Najwa Mohd Faudzi and Anis Fariza Md Pazil

signal to the LED to glow at maximum brightness. So the LED continues to glow at
maximum brightness until the vehicle passes by the sensor.
A single IR sensor is connected to two LEDs. As long as the vehicle is in the IR sensor
range, the corresponding two LEDs will remain at maximum intensity. As the vehicle passes
by the first IR sensor and onto the next IR sensor, the twoLEDs connected to the previous
sensor will come back to the minimum intensity state and the next two LEDs connected to the
2nd IR sensor will reach maximum intensity and so on as shown in Figure 9 and Figure 10. An
AnalogWrite value of 255 is assigned to the LED to glow at full intensity.
AnalogWrite value across LED = 255
Current across LED = 20mA

Figure 9When car comes in range of 4th sensor the 7th and 8th street lights brighten

Figure 10 When car comes in range of 3rd sensor the 5th and 6th street light brighten
Two different methods namely conventional method and adaptive method(the system
proposed in this project)has been used to calculate the energy dissipated. Conventional
method is the method that has been used nowadays in which the street lights areat maximum
brightness regardless of the presence of vehicles. Therefore, the calculated energy dissipated
using conventional method for both cases are the same as presented in Table 1.
On the other hand, the adaptive method will consider the fluctuation of brightness
between maximum and minimum depending on the presence of the vehicles. Therefore, in
case 1 when there is no vehicle exists, the street light will remain in minimum brightness with
analog write value for LED is 30. However, as the vehicles are constantly passing by the
street lights, the brightness will keep on fluctuating betweenmaximum andminimum.For this
project, it is estimatedthat the street lights total duration for maximum brightness is 25
minutes, while 35 minutesfor minimum brightness in a total of 60min/1hr.The calculated
results for voltage, power and dissipated energy for both methods and cases can be referred to
Table 1. The calculated efficiency is obtained by using Eqn. (4):

(4)

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 Energy Efficient Automatic Street Light Intensity Control by Infrared Sensors and Led

Table 2 Comparison between Conventional Method and Adaptive Method in Case 1 and Case 2
Conventional Method Adaptive Method Efficiency
Analog WriteValue:
Analog WriteValue:
30
255
(minimum
(maximum brightness)
Case 1 brightness) 88.2%
V = 5V V= 0.59V
P = 0.1W P = 0.0118W
E = 0.1Wh E = 0.0118Wh
Analog WriteValue:
255 (maximum
Analog WriteValue: brightness) in 25
255 min and 30
(maximum brightness) (minimum
brightness) in 35
Case 2 min. 51.6%
Vmax = 5V
V = 5V Vmin = 0.59V
P = 0.1W P max = 0.1W
E = 0.1Wh Pmin = 0.0118W
E total = 0.048Wh
The summary of the energy dissipated per hour by the conventional method and adaptive
method in both cases is illustrated in Figure 11.It can been seen that the adaptive method
requires less energy to operate in 1 hour as compared to the conventional methodfor both
cases.

Figure 11 Comparison between test results of case 1 and case 2

4. CONCLUSION
In this report the energy efficient automatic street light system using sensor and LED has been
presented. The main objective of this project is to save energy and power consumption as well
as to provide a better street lighting system. Thus, the street lights were integrated with the IR
sensors to detect the presence of the vehicles. As a result, around 88% of energy consumption
can be reduced by using this proposed system providing a better solution for energy saving.
Furthermore, the usage of low cost microcontroller (Arduino) and LEDs as street lights in
place of HPS lamp generate a better saving in terms of costs. Also the increased lifetime, low
maintenance cost and better illumination that the LED provides are the other reasons to
reduce the operational costs. Overall, the efficiency of energy and the quality of lighting are
improved in this proposed project. In the future, solar system can be added to the street
lighting, where the battery used to power up the street light can be charged in the day through
sunlight by harvesting the solar energy.

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 Nurulazlina Ramli, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Najwa Mohd Faudzi and Anis Fariza Md Pazil

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank the Faculty of Engineering and Built University and SEGi
University for the financial support.

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