Smart parking technology enables efficient use of resources
1 min read
A new smart parking technology has been designed to enable cities to make efficient use of parking resources and allow consultancies and system integrators to customise and deploy the information in their local area.
Wireless sensor network specialist, Libelium, says the Waspmote based platform can be buried in parking spaces and detect the arrival and departure of vehicles. It then allows system integrators to offer parking management data to city councils by providing information on available spaces.
According to Alicia Asin, Libelium's ceo, the smart parking sensors communicate with the rest of the sensor network using Waspmote's ZigBee radio. "The first deployment of the platform will be with SmartSantander – a unique city scale experiment in applications of smart city technology which is already considered as a reference in the smart cities field." Santander is the capital of the region of Cantabria situated on the north coast of Spain.
Waspmote's power management and over the air programming (OTA) means that, once installed, the sensors do not need to be accessed for up to five years. OTA programming enables the software for entire networks to be upgraded over a radio network, without the need to dig up parking spaces. The low maintenance means that networks with hundreds of nodes can be readily deployed.
The sensors communicate with gateways via radios at either 2.4GHz or 868/900MHz. For 2.4 GHz ZigBee connections, mesh networks are implemented with routing motes located in street lights. For the lower frequency radios, it's possible for parking sensors to communicate directly with the gateway as the propagation distance is longer.
As the sensor nodes are supplied in a pvc casing rated at IK10 for mechanical impact protection and at IP67 for ingress protection, radio communication is not hindered.
