2023 International Conference on Recent Advances in Electrical, Electronics & Digital Healthcare Technologies (REEDCON)

Smart Street Lighting System Based on Detecting

Vehicle Movement
2023 International Conference on Recent Advances in Electrical, Electronics & Digital Healthcare Technologies (REEDCON) | 978-1-6654-9382-6/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/REEDCON57544.2023.10151436

Anwar Shahzad Siddiqui Shahid Geelani

Arbab Ahmed Khan
Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
Department of Electrical Engineering
Jamia Millia Islamia Jamia Millia Islamia
Jamia Millia Islamia
New Delhi New Delhi
New Delhi, India
assiddiqui@jmi.ac.in geelani.shahid227@gmail.com
arbabkhan6071@gmail.com
Syed Mashood Shafi
Md Sarwar
Electrical Engineering Department
Department of Electrical Engineering.
Jamia Millia Islamia
Jamia Millia Islamia
New Delhi
New Delhi, India
syedmashood1234@gmail.com
msarwar@jmi.ac.in

Abstract—Energy conservation is an important matter as
resources are decreasing at an alarming rate and this would
create a lot of problems for the next generations. To overcome
from this issue, a proper energy saving method and automatic
lighting control needs to be implemented. This work proposes a
model for modifying Street lights illumination using sensors at
minimum electrical consumption as well as elimination of
manual operation. In this work the LED lights are used as
streetlights, LDR sensor is used for detecting light intensity for
differentiating between daytime and night-time and IR sensors
are used to sense vehicle movements. If presence is not
detected, all nearby streetlights remain in the dim mode, which
is 30% intensity for pedestrians, and only illuminate at 100%
intensity when presence is detected. LED bulbs shall be used as
they are better than conventional incandescent bulbs in every
way. The intensity of LED can be controlled using PWM
techniques. Through this proposed System the overall energy
being utilized now-a-days for lighting is minimized. The
automatic control of lighting is required to control the complex
lighting system due to growth of cities and the standard of
living.
Keywords—Smart Street Lights, Sensors, Automation, LED
I. INTRODUCTION
One of a city's biggest energy expenses is its street
lighting. An intelligent street lighting system can cut
municipal street lighting costs as much as 50% - 70% [1]. In
the present conventional systems, the lights are switched on
in the evening before the sun sets and are switched off the
next day in the morning after there is adequate light outside.
Power is wasted up to some extent with this manual method.
One of the main drawbacks of the current streetlight systems
is that the ON and OFF periods vary on sunny and rainy
days. Consumption of energy is increasing at fast rates due to
economic development and growth of population. The
energy consumption in world is increasing at very fast rates.
Streetlights are an essential part of any developing country as
they are present on all roadways, streets, parks, and in the
suburbs. The streetlights are powered from dusk to dawn at
full strength every single day even when there is no traffic.
All of this contributes to wastage of electricity resulting in
greater demand of electricity production and hence more
carbon dioxide emissions from the powerhouses. So, a
solution is needed to automate the switching ON/OFF of the
streetlights. A simple method of switching ON of the
streetlights when vehicle is present and then switching OFF
when there is no vehicle present on the street can be
implemented [2, 3].
A proper energy saving methods and lighting control
must be implemented. Dimming the lights during off peak
hours is an effective solution. The lights are dimmed to 30%
intensity instead of switching OFF completely [4]. This
project presents an automatic street light system in which a
Light Dependant Resistor (LDR) is used to detect the Light
Intensity and Infra-Red sensors placed at the base of the
streetlight to detect vehicle movement [5]. When a vehicle
presence is detected, the lights around it will glow at full
intensity. The model has two main modes, one is during no
vehicle movement in streets the lights will glow at low
intensity (30%) for pedestrians and two, the lights
automatically glow at full intensity (100%) during vehicle
movement [6]. The main objective of this project is to reduce
power consumption and automate the illumination of
streetlights by detection of vehicles. By integrating the entire
streetlights with Automatic Street Lighting System, it is
possible minimize the overall energy being utilized. This
systems results in saving lots of energy and reducing the cost
of operation of the streetlights.
The paper is organized as follows: Section II presents the
conventional model while proposed model is discussed in
section III. The hardware design of the proposed model is
described in section IV. The results obtained with the
proposed model are presented and discussed in section V and
finally section V concludes the presented work.
II. PRESENT CONVENTIONAL SYSTEM
A significant portion of the world's energy use is due to
street lighting. India is the same. As street lighting consumes
several trillion kWh annually, improving power consumption
efficiency with the aim of reducing energy consumption is
one area that requires significant attention.
High amount of energy must be generated to satisfy the high
consumption of power; this results in high level of noxious
emissions. Conventional system uses manual switching
OFF/ON of streetlights. There are difficulties related to the
maintenance of the system. The streetlights are powered
from dusk to dawn at full strength every single day even
when there is no one present. All of this contributes to a
higher demand for production of electricity and thus more
carbon dioxide emissions from powerhouse. As HID lamps
are currently in use in urban streetlights and operate on the
gas discharge principle, no voltage reduction technique can
be used to control the intensity because the discharge path is
broken. HID are not reliable and not cost effective [7].

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 2023 International Conference on Recent Advances in Electrical, Electronics & Digital Healthcare Technologies (REEDCON)

In conventional system, when there are no cars or people All the three LEDs are connected with a 220-ohm resistor.
around, the lamps always stay on. In the absence of any The 3 Infra-red sensors (IR 1, IR 2, IR 3) are used to detect
activity on the street, these streetlights are unnecessarily vehicle movements are connected to the digital input pins 2,3
glowing at maximum intensity thus wasting power. and 4 respectively. All the three IR sensors are connected
across the 5V and the GND of the Arduino Uno.
III. PROPOSED MODEL
The proposed system involves in dimming the lights
during off-peak hours to 30% intensity. When movement of
a vehicle is detected on the street by the infra-red sensors
placed at the base of the streetlights. The infra-red sensor
detects the movement of the vehicle and sends the data to the
Arduino. The Arduino then commands the streetlight where
the vehicle is detected to glow at its maximum intensity until
the movement of the vehicle is no longer detected. The
streetlight then continues glowing at 30% intensity.
The system stays in operating mode only when the sunlight
is not detected i.e., during night-time and switches off during
daytime.
Some main components used in our system:
1. Arduino Board: The Arduino is the microcontroller
which controls the entire system. Depending on the situation,
it sends commands to switch between bright and dim modes
and regulates the streetlight's brightness.
2. LDR: A Light Dependent Resistor is used to detect the
presence of light so that during daytime the streetlights
remain off. It works on the principle of photo conductivity.
3. Infrared Sensor: It is an electronic instrument that
measures and detects infrared radiation in its environment.
These are used for detecting the presence of the vehicle.
4. LED: Light-Emitting Diodes or LEDs are used for the Fig. 1. Flow chart for detection of Vehicle
streetlights. The brightness of the LEDS can be controlled
using pulse width modulation (PWM)

A. Working Modes
The design includes three working modes: -
• Mode 1: When there is enough natural light in the
surrounding i.e., during the daytime, the system remains
switched off.
• Mode 2: When the natural light drops below a certain
level the system automatically turns on.
• Mode 3: In the presence of vehicles, the sensors detect
Fig. 2. Circuit Diagram
the vehicle which in turn switches on the LED lights. These
lights turn off when vehicle is no longer detected.
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The complete working of the system is shown in the
flowchart in Fig. 1. As discussed above the objective of this project is to
automate the illumination of streetlights and reduce power
consumption by detecting vehicle movement using sensors.
IV. HARDWARE DESIGN The model consists of LDR sensor, Arduino Uno
The Fig. 2. shows the circuit diagram of the proposed model. microcontroller, three IR sensors, three LEDs. The three IR
In this one LDR circuit is used to distinguish between the sensors are placed at the base of the streetlights. All the
day and night. LDR with a 5K-ohm resistor in series is components are connected to the Arduino Uno using a
connected across the 5V and GND of the Arduino Uno and breadboard and connecting wires. The Arduino is connected
from the midpoint of the LDR potential divider circuit, the to an external power supply to power the system.
output of the circuit is fed to A3 of the Arduino. The LEDs
(LED 1, LED 2, LED 3) are connected to the Digital PWM We have used airpods case as a vehicle for demonstration
pins of the Arduino which are pins ~9, ~10, ~11 respectively. purposes.
The PWM pins are used to control the intensity of the LED To show the working of the model we have taken the
lights. following five cases:

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 2023 International Conference on Recent Advances in Electrical, Electronics & Digital Healthcare Technologies (REEDCON)
CASE 1: Operation of streetlights during daytime
CASE 2: Operation of streetlights during night-time with no
vehicle movement
CASE 3: Operation of streetlight when vehicle is detected at
IR sensor 1.
CASE 4: Operation of streetlight when vehicle is detected at
IR sensor 2.
CASE 5: Operation of streetlight when vehicle is detected at
IR sensor 3.
1. CASE 1: Operation of streetlights during daytime
Fig. 3. Operation of streetlights during daytime
To represent daytime the lights in the room are switched on
as shown in Fig. 3. We can see that there is light present, so
the LDR senses and sends analog signals to the Arduino. The
Arduino then compares these values to the LDR reference
value (100).
If the values sent by the LDR is greater than LDR reference
value (100), the Arduino commands to switch off the system.
Therefore, the system remains off during daytime.
2. CASE 2: Operation of streetlights during night-time with
no vehicle movement
Fig. 4. Operation of streetlights during night-time with no vehicle movement
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627
To represent night-time the lights in the room are switched
off as shown in Fig. 4. The LDR senses and sends analog
signals to the Arduino.
The Arduino then compares the values to the reference
value (100). If the values sent by the LDR is less than
reference value (100), the Arduino powers the system, and
the IR sensors start functioning i.e., All the streetlights start
glowing at 30% intensity for pedestrians.
3. CASE 3: Operation of streetlight when vehicle is
detected at IR sensor 1.
Fig. 5. Operation of streetlight when vehicle is detected at IR 1
As shown in Fig. 5., the IR 1 detects the movement of the
vehicle and sends a signal to the Arduino. The Arduino then
commands LED 1 to glow at 100% intensity. The other two
IR sensors, IR 2 and IR 3 do not sense any movement;
hence the LED 2 and LED 3 continue glowing at 30%
intensity.
4. CASE 4: Operation of streetlight when vehicle is
detected at IR sensor 2.
Fig. 6. Operation of streetlight when vehicle is detected at IR 2
The vehicle moves away from IR 1 and reaches in the range
of IR 2 as shown in Fig. 6. IR 1 no longer detects the
 2023 International Conference on Recent Advances in Electrical, Electronics & Digital Healthcare Technologies (REEDCON)
vehicle; Therefore, the intensity of LED 1 will be reduced
back to 30%.
The IR 2 will now be detecting the presence of the vehicle.
The Arduino will then command the LED 2 to glow at
100% intensity. The IR 3 will wait for the vehicle and LED
3 will continue glowing at 30% intensity.
5. CASE 5: Operation of streetlight when vehicle is
detected at IR sensor 3.
Fig. 7. Operation of streetlight when vehicle is detected at IR 3.
The vehicle moves away from IR 2 and reaches in the range
of IR 3 as shown in Fig. 7., IR 2 no longer detects the
vehicle Therefore, the intensity of LED 2 will be reduced
back to 30%. The IR 3 will now be detecting the presence of
the vehicle. The Arduino will then command the LED 3 to
glow at 100% intensity.
The IR 1 and IR 2 will wait for another vehicle and LED 1
and LED 2 will continue glowing at 30% intensity.
VI. CONCLUSION
The implementation of this work has significantly saved
power as the unnecessary power consumption is reduced.
We have reduced the intensity to 30% during off-peak hours
when there is no vehicle movement, this saves power as
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earlier the LEDs were glowing continuously thus,
consuming more power.
The power consumption is reduced by automating the
streetlights illumination, and also the manual operation is
eliminated. The dimming of streetlights when not needed
help to save significant amount of energy. This proposed
model has scope in various applications like for providing
lighting in large campuses, car parking for shopping malls,
walking path in parks. It is also beneficial for rural as well
as urban areas. This can also be integrated with security
camera for surveillance purposes in schools, college
campuses and corporate buildings. Weather monitoring
systems can also be integrated with the streetlights to
continuously monitor the air quality, temperature of urban
areas. This system can also be integrated with IOT for future
scope for smart cities.
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