2018 Third International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC)

A Smart City Adaptive Lighting System

Gianfranco Gagliardi1, Alessandro Casavola1, Marco Lupia1, Gianni Cario1, Francesco Tedesco1, Fabrizio Lo
Scudo1, Francesco Cicchello Gaccio1, and Antonio Augimeri2
1Department of Computer Engineering, Modelling, Electronics and Systems,
University of Calabria, Rende, Italy
{g.gagliardi,a.csavola, m.lupia,g.cario,ftedesco,f.loscudo, f.cicchello}@dimes.unical.it
2Biotecnomed Scarl

Corso Europa, Catanzaro, Italy

antonio.augimeri@biotecnomed.it

Abstract—This paper presents an urban smart lighting system
capable to autonomously control the street lamp lighting level
by exploiting data related to vehicles (bus, car, motorcycle and
bike) and/or pedestrians traffic in a specific area. The system
is able to set the lighting level on the basis of required needs
and allows one to reduce energy costs. To this end, it makes use
of local controllers, motion sensors, video-camera and electronic
devices for video processing. In this way the inputs coming from
the sensors is processed in order to optimally dim the lighting by
applying an 1-10 V control input voltage to the fixture or driver.
The control can be performed either on a decentralized fashion
on each single street lamp or on a group of them. Experimental
results show that with respect to a traditional street lamp system,
the presented architecture allows energy saving up to 65%
Index Terms—Smart lighting, smart cities, video processing,
power line communication, Zigbee communication, energy saving
I. I NTRODUCTION
A recent survey of the European Commission pointed
out that a major increasing energy consumption will mainly
involve the cities rather than rural areas [1]. In fact, up to
80% of produced energy is used to supply cities power grids.
In this respect, despite the plenty of existing skills and related
technologies, street lighting represents one of the most relevant
public energy expense. However, recent advances in renewable
energy plants, control technologies and embedded systems
have made feasible the design of modern lighting systems
endowed with smart technologies where energy savings issue
can be efficiently faced.
Smart lighting [2] is a multidisciplinary area within the
context of Smart City that provides integration among sensors,
control technologies, with the aim of making efficient the street
lamps management. As far as the the technological point of
view is concerned, the Smart City paradigm is deeply related
This research is based upon work partially supported by the MIUR Social
Innovation research project PON 04a3-000402, entitled ”‘SMART(SMARt
lighTing)”’, granted by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and
Research within the PROGRAMMA OPERATIVO NAZIONALE RICERCA
E COMPETITIVITA’ PER LE REGIONI DELLA CONVERGENZA -
2007/2013 Asse III, Obiettivo Operativo - Social Innovation.
to the Internet of Things (IoT) concept and for this it can be
seen as an ‘enabling technology’ of services for urban areas.
Several works have been presented in the literature covering
various aspects of smart street lighting systems. Among them,
in [3], the advantages of the use of LED DC lamps is
emphasized with respect to traditional AC street lights; in fact
they are characterized by longer lifetime, lower maintenance
costs, higher efficiency, and, most of all, they are mercury-
free and turn out easily disposable. The related energy saving
can be much higher if each street lamp is endowed with
an embedded solar panel [4]. A further energy consumption
reduction can be achieved if the LED lamps intensity is
controlled by means of an intelligent system that is able to
compute optimal lighting profiles on the basis of traffic and
weather information. This aspect has been widely dealt with
in [5], [6] where a wireless data network-based street lighting
system has been designed that is capable of controlling and
monitoring a system that contains a number of street lights by
using the ZigBee protocol. Similar approaches are considered
in [7], [8] where a LED system is equipped with sensors and
control technologies in order to exploit motion detection to
regulate light intensity.
In this paper the outcomes of a recent project focused
on the design of a smart lighting control are presented. The
system is based on the use of local sensors, local controllers,
video-processing for motion detection purpose and remote web
application, is presented. It provides the following advantages:
• energy savings;
• reducing light pollution and CO2 emissions;
• earning money for the community;
• improving general well-being.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section II
presents the main features of our smart lighting system, Sec-
tion III concerns about video processing for motion detection
purpose, Section IV is devoted to illustrate the lighting local
controllers and their interaction with other electronic devices,
Section V briefly describes the remote web application whilst

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 2018 Third International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC)

Section VI reports the results obtained in a real experimental

scenario. Finally, some conclusions ends the paper.
LED Lamp
II. S MART S TREET L IGHTING S YSTEM
Sensors
The main goal of this project has been at building a smart
street lighting system prototype (see Figure 1) which is in
charge to minimize the energy consumption of street lighting
by providing maximum light intensity in particular conditions Video camera
only.
The main features of the prototype are listed below: Video camera
1) Individual or group street light control;
2) Local communication between electronic devices based
on Power Line Communication (PLC) and/or Zigbee
devices;
3) Traffic and emergency conditions (e.g. road accidents)
monitoring;
4) Consumptions evaluation; Control and
5) Remote control and management through web applica- Communication Devices
tion;
6) Remote communication, between local electronic de-
vices and web application, based on 3G/4G connection.

Remote Control Station Fig. 2. Smart Pole

- Traffic data
- Meteo data
- Emergency conditions
- Lighting control signal
- Traffic data
- Meteo data
- Emergency
- Remote
Control commands
3G/4G/Wi-Fi Communication
PLC/ZigBee Communication
Gateway
Fig. 1. Smart Street Lighting Concept
In this prototype, the main role is played by the so called
‘smart pole’ (see Figure 2) that is equipped with:
• High efficiency LED lamp which allows energy consump-
tion reduction up to 40% with respect to traditional lamps;
• Weather sensors for measuring rain intensity, humidity,
pressure, temperature, light, wind direction and velocity;
• Video camera which, thanks to specifics electronic de-
vices and video processing algorithms, allows traffic
monitoring and enables an adaptive light control;
• Control devices for LED lamp dimming;
• Communication devices for information exchange among
local smart poles.
The smart pole working modes is briefly hereinafter described.
Traffic monitoring functions are enabled during day time
only: all traffic data are extracted in real-time through video
processing and then shared with the web application. During
night time, all smart functionalities are enabled, and the LED
light dimming is performed on the basis of vehicles or pedes-
trians presence in the monitored area (street, square, etc...). In
particular, if no presence is detected in the monitored area, the
LED light intensity is fixed to the minimum value prescribed
by the street lighting regulations. Otherwise, if a presence is
detected, the LED light intensity is set to the most suitable
value for the monitored area. In such a way, the LED light
intensity is considered as a function of vehicles/pedestrians
presence and, in turn, a huge energy saving can be achieved
whenever the traffic is null or low for long periods at night
time. In view of this, it is noticeable that the application
smartness is achieved by three main steps:
1) Vehicles and pedestrians presence detection in the mon-
itored area;
2) Light intensity control as a function of presence;
3) Sharing information and alerts with the remote manage-
ment and control station.
It is worth noticing that in some scenarios there is no need
to equip poles with motion detection devices. For instance
in a straight road unprovided with side access, the smart
lighting system can be configured so that only two poles (at
the beginning and at the end of the road) are equipped with
motion detection devices. In such a way two types of smart
poles can be defined:
• smart master pole equipped with motion detection and
dimming devices;
• smart slave pole equipped with dimming devices only.
III. V IDEO P ROCESSING FOR V EHICLES AND
P EDESTRIANS D ETECTION
The aim of the video processing stage is at detecting a
moving object in a video sequence. The common approach

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 2018 Third International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC)

for discriminating moving object from the background scene Image Background
Video Frame
is the background subtraction method. It basically works by pre-processing modeling
subtracting the current frame from a reference frame which is
a static background previously acquired [10]. There are several
+
background subtraction algorithms [9], most of them based on Image - Foreground &
the following four steps (Figure 4): pre-processing binary mask

1) Pre-processing: a simple image processing task that

converts the raw input video into a format that can be
easily processed by subsequent steps; Detection
Binary Image
2) Background modeling process: initial group of frames of
Analysis
moving objects
are mixed to build up a background model [11];
3) Foreground detection and binary mask creation pro-
cess: input video frame is compared with the background Fig. 4. Background subtraction and detection processes
model and candidate foreground pixels from the input
frame are identified. A threshold based algorithm is then
applied to convert a gray scale image into a binary mask,
so that the objects of interest are separated from the
background.
4) Binary image analysis: those pixels that do not corre-
spond to actual moving objects are deleted.
At the end of this steps the binary image is then processed in
order to detect the moving objects. To this end a Blob Analysis Fig. 5. Video processing algorithm output
is adopted to identify vehicles and pedestrians on the basis
of spatial characteristics reported in Figure 3 [12]. Thanks to
this analysis it is possible to prevent wrong moving object IV. L IGHTING C ONTROL
identifications (e.g. animal motions). Please notice that a blob
is defined as a region of an image in which some properties The video processing procedure is instrumental for lighting
are approximately constant. control. If vehicles or pedestrians are detected a ‘motion
detected’ event is generated from master pole and sent via local
communication channel (PLC/Zigbee based communication),
to the other poles (master and slave) that are equipped with
TOP
the lighting control board (see Figure 7).

EDGE
The lighting control board, whose a 3D view is depicted
CENTER
in Figure 8 and main specifications are report in Table I, has
LEFT
RIGHT been designed, assembled and properly customized for our
smart lighting application.
AREA The communication within video processing and lighting
control boards exploits an ‘ad-hoc’ communication protocol
BUTTOM

Fig. 3. Blob features

The background subtraction algorithm and the blob anal-

ysis procedure have been implemented by using the Im-
age Processing and Computer Vision Toolbox available in
Matlab/Simulink©. Figure 5 shows the output of the video
processing algorithm: the car in monitored area is correctly
detected. In order to build up a prototypal setup, the Mat-
lab/Simulink code of video processing algorithm has been
recast into C language suitable for the Board EVM DM6437
[13], [14]. In Figure 6 the result of a real-time test performed
on a highway is depicted, it is possible to observe that the
vehicle is correctly detected.
Fig. 6. EVM DM6437 output

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 2018 Third International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC)

• Command: command (e.g. motion detection event, dim-

Video Frame ming command) and related parameters;
No • Payload length
EVENT When the ‘motion detection’ event is received, the lighting
Video received?
Processing
control board generates a control command that is conveyed
Yes
to all poles present in the street. The control command is a 1−
10V input voltage that drives the LED lamp to a proper safety
Generate and send
No
dimming command luminosity level. After a settable number of seconds, if no
other ‘motion detection’ events have been so far received, the
Motion PLC/ZigBee
detected? Communication
control board drives the LED lamp to the minimum lighting
values prescribed by the street lighting regulations. Figure 10
Yes
shown the electrical circuit that generates the 1−10V dimming
signal. The lighting control board is also in charge of detecting
Generate and send
“motion detected”
EVENT

Fig. 7. Video processing and lighting control boards interaction

Fig. 10. 1-10V control input circuit

anomalous behaviors in the poles network and faults on street

lamps. If such anomalous conditions occur, the board generates
an event that is transmitted to the remote web application.

V. W EB A PPLICATION
Fig. 8. Prototype Lighting Control Board: 3D view The smart lighting system prototype is endowed with a web
application that allows remote management and control. It is
coded with the Java© language and presents the following
whose header is reported in Figure 9.
features:
• Users management;
• Lighting system management and control;
• Anomalous conditions monitoring;
• Traffic and meteo information evaluations;
Site Pole
ID ID
Pole Type Ack req Protocol version Command Payload length
• Energy consumptions monitoring.

Through the remote web application the user can monitor

Fig. 9. Communication protocol header the lighting system status and manage the overall system
settings. For instance it is possible to establish for some groups
The information contained in the header are: of street lamps either if they have to change their lighting
• Site ID: the unique identifier of the monitored area; intensity according to the traffic conditions or if they have to
• Pole ID: the unique identifier of the smart pole; track a prescribed lighting profile or have to ensure a fixed
• Pole Type: indicates if the pole is Master or Slave; lighting level, etc.. Furthermore, the remote user can evaluate
• Ack req: the acknowledge request; information related to consumption and energy saving, traffic,
• Protocol version weather conditions and alerts. At the same time the web
platform offers the chance to set various configurations for
a single and/or a group of street lamps. Figures 11, 12 and
TABLE I 13 show some screen shots of the web platform. In particular,
L IGHTING C ONTROL B OARD M AIN S PECIFICATIONS
Figure 11 depicts the street lighting remote management page
Microcontroller dsPIC33 16 bit where the user can operate in order to set the operating mode
Communication interface PLC modem or XBee Pro S2B module and configuration of the street poles. Figure 12 shows energy
Power supply 24VDC 50/60 [Hz]
Real Time Clock MCP79410 consumption monitor page; in this page the user can monitor
the consumption trend and evaluate the energy saving granted

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 2018 Third International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC)

(experimentation site n.1) is represented by a busy road

of University of Calabria (Italy) whilst the second one
(experimentation site n.2) is a secondary road of the munic-
ipal district of Crucoli (Italy). In both sites the experimental
setup involves ten lighting poles on a 150 [m] road.
The experimentation work has been carried out in three steps.
Street Lighting System
Configurations Menu Street Lamp
GPS locations
The first step focused on collecting a huge amount of data
related to consumption of the traditional lighting systems
Street Lamp
present in two demonstration sites. In the second step ten street
Informations
lamps have been upgraded to LED technology in both sites.
After the upgrading, a new data collection campaign aimed
at comparing the consumption has been undertaken. The last
step has been focused on the replacement of ten traditional
Fig. 11. Web application: street lighting remote management street poles with ten smart poles in both demonstration sites
and collecting again consumption data.
The experimental activity, started in October 2015 and still
by the smart system with respect to a traditional (e.g. classic
sodium vapor street lights) street lamps system. Finally, Figure
13 shows the traffic monitoring web page.

Consumptions trend
Consumptions evaluation

Consumptions trend
Consumptions evaluation

(a) (b)

Fig. 14. Setup of smart lighting pole.

Fig. 12. Web application: energy consumption monitoring
ongoing, has been useful to compare the consumption of
our smart lighting system with the respect to both traditional
and LED based systems. In Tables II and III, respectively, a
comparison, referred to twelve hours (from 18:00h to 06:00h)
of experimentation, in terms of consumption and energy saving
Vehicles is reported. In particular, Table II reports the consumption
of Standard, LED and Smart lighting system for both sites.
Note that the column of Smart lighting consumptions includes
also those related to electronic devices installed on lighting
poles (approximately 600 [W h]). On the other hand, Table III
Pedestrians reports the energy saving, for both experimentation sites, that
the use of different technologies (Smart or LED) can ensure
with respect to the standard lighting systems. Furthermore, this
table reports the energy saving that Smart lighting system can
ensure with respect to a LED lighting system. It should be
Fig. 13. Web application: traffic monitoring noted that, the values reported in Tables II and III, although
referring to only 24 hours, are coherent with the annual
values of consumptions and energy savings registered during
VI. E XPERIMENTAL RESULTS the experimentation. Moreover, Figures 15 and 16 show
In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed a complete consumption comparison among the compared
system in different real scenarios, two experimental setups technologies for both the considered demonstration sites. It is
have been constructed in two different sites. The first site important to note that these figures reports, for a better view,

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 2018 Third International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC)

TABLE II the LED upgraded system. Demonstration videos of the Smart

C ONSUMPTIONS lighting system functioning can be found at the web link http :
Site Standard lighting LED lighting Smart lighting //www.smartlightingproject.it/new/index.php/demo
#1 19.602,53[W h] 11.355,7 [W h] 7.815,5[W h]
#2 13.143,23[W h] 7.614,52 [W h] 4.649,7[W h] VII. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper a smart street lighting prototype has been
described and shown to be effective in two experimental sites.
TABLE III
E NERGY SAVING First, a general system description has been presented, then
the basic ideas and the main features of the smart lighting
Site Smart VS Standard Smart VS LED LED VS Standard prototype has been presented. The system is able to establish
#1 60,13% 31,18% 42,07%
#2 64,62% 38,93% 42,07% the optimal lighting profile for each lamps on the basis of
both traffic and weather conditions. The experimental stage has
demonstrated that the proposed system is capable to achieve
a significant energy saving with respect to traditional street
only six hours (from 00:00h to 06:00h) of experimentation. lamps systems.
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