Study on Smart Street Light (SSL) using Ultra Narrowband (UNB) Technology: a case study of Malaysia Power Utility

Street light is important to road user and residential area to improve visibility and creating safer road by preventing traffic accidents and also by reducing crime. However, present practice for street lighting management largely remains a challenge. Smart Street Lighting (SSL) system is a system where the street lighting system adds up with communication technology producing a real time monitoring system. Smart Street Lighting (SSL) is known to gain high value creation through maintenance savings and improvement of the environmental impact for Malaysia. Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) through its research arm, TNB Research (TNBR) has recently carried a feasibility study on the compatibility of SSL system using Ultra Narrowband (UNB) technology on the energy efficient and better light intensity of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting technology street light. The SSL systems have been deployed on a small scale, tested and monitored at selected areas. This paper discussed the technical performance such as functionality and compatibility that have been assessed in the study.


Introduction
Street light is one of the major indicators of Malaysia Power Utility, Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB)'s performance for the community, for a safer environment of the road user.Driven by rising maintenance costs and increasing concern for environmental preservation from the High Pressure Sodium Vapor (HPSV) street light, TNB has now installing light emitting diode (LED) technologies with better brightness intensity, better uniformity of lighting for road user and require less maintenance compared to HPSV street light.
LED street light together with Internet of Things (IoT) solutions technology, it is said it can provide real time solution where the connectivity enables the lights to be remotely monitored and controlled, hence TNB team can repair and fix the fail street light as soon as it can.When the LED street lights are connected with IoT communication, the street lights can be dimmed outside of peak hours and when it is necessary, the LED street light can be turned on or off as needed and any failure or damage of the LED street light can be notified quickly.In addition, it is expected that both maintenance and preventive maintenance can be reduced which giving good benefits to TNB and street light user.
In the current street light practise, there are issues where the failure street lights are not being repaired on time.This is due to no or improper complaint from the public to TNB such as insufficient information or invalid location given in the complaint report.With this SSL technology, the technology can help to reduce human involvement by notifying the fail street light light through wireless communication.SSL technology is also expected to manage street lights more effectively and help to reduce the patrolling cost and labor of the worker at night, thus help to reduce maintenance costs.
Above mentioned shows the Smart street light has high opportunity to play as an important role in improving the reliability of a street light system.This is due to Smart Street light can gather all the required information by the end sure collected from the system and can then be leveraged to provide to better street light system solutions.

Smart Street Lights Pilot Study
The network infrastructure used for this study is Ultra Narrowband (UNB) technology.UNB communication technology is a wireless network with a low power consumption and the frequency of the system range from 915MHz to 923 MHz [1,2].UNB communication technology is known to have long range communication within 10 km and can be up to 15km depends on the area of communication.UNB communication technology uses unlicensed spectrum for its IoT [3,4,5].
The Smart Street Light System using UNB technology architecture contains three main parts which are the Street Light Controller, Data Collector and the server.In this study, the server used is cloud based server.The web browser to cloud used HTTPS type to encrypt the communication between the browser and the cloud.HTTPS requires a digital certificate that allows the browser to verify the identity of the web server.
The Smart Street light system using UNB technology can be turned on, off or dim the street light based on readings from set threshold by the end user.The system is able to notify street light when the street light is in normal or in failure condition.The system also able to provide notification to the end-user for all required information by the end user.The data will be send wirelessly from street light controller to the system server frequently, this is important to ensure the information displayed on the Control Monitoring system (CMS) is always latest information.
The communication between the Street Light Controller to Data Collector and to server are bi-directional communication.The Data Collector will send the status of the LED street light whether the street light is on or off condition, whether the LED street light intensity is in dim or full brightness condition, whether the LED street light is in fail condition.The Data Collector also will provide the information of the number of operating hours and also information of the LED street light electrical characteristics.The application of the CMS allow the end-users to control street light remotely from the website and when there is application from the end user to control the street light either to switch on or turn off the LED street light or control the light intensity of the street light, the input request data change from the enduser in the server will be send to the Data Collector before it give input to Street Light Controller on the LED street light and perform accordingly [6].
During the Smart Street light system using UNB technology deployment, before the installation of the Data Collector were made, the geography of the deployment areas was studied.This study helps to provide the reachability capability of the communication technologies in open space, rural areas with high buildings, crowded area, urban area or in mountain areas.In this study, the area of installation of Smart Street light system using UNB technology was in urban area.There were 550 Smart Street Light controllers installed on LED street light with 3 Data Collector.The installed Smart Street Light Smart Street light system using UNB technology controllers were monitored by TNB street lighting teams at sites daily for a year.

Smart Street Lights Findings
Smart Street light system using UNB technology system has three main components which are the Street Light Controller, a UNB network and a central management system (CMS).In this study, Smart Street light system using UNB technology is a bi-level wireless communication network and has provide several advantages includes the monitoring capability, the capability to control the street light to be turned on or off, to capability to change the LED street light intensity is in dim or full brightness, to get the information at real time of the automated outage detection and also the ability to get information of the performance data analysis such as the number of operating hours and the LED street light electrical characteristics.
In addition, it is found that the Smart Street light system using UNB technology system technologies also capable to store information of pole asset details and type of LED street light.The UNB CMS capable to provide a real time error reporting and data analytics tools and performance graphs of the LED street light.
From above mentioned, Smart Street light system using UNB technology has demonstrated a reliable performance in terms of its communication connectivity and reachability from the Street Light Controller to the server through the Data Collector.The changes request made by the end user to the Street Light Controller was recorded at 10 seconds in clear bright skies.
The CMS for Smart Street light system using UNB technology system used the Google Maps enterprise mapping system with satellite and streetview.The CMS is integrated with geo-fencing, color coding, filtering and tagging functions technology.The geofencing technology helps to allow for end user to define perimeters by setting the latitude, longitude and radius of each geofence.This technology helps to notify when the Street Light Controller crosses a geofence.This is important especially during the maintenance of the LED street light where there is chances of mistakenly installed the Street Light Controller on different LED Street light.Hence, the notifications help to alert end user and take appropriate action.The CMS Smart Street light system using UNB technology system is TALQ Smart City Protocol.TALQ Smart City Protocol is a certification by TALQ Consortium.TALQ Consortium is a consortium where they developed interface standard for smart city device networks with specification for information exchange, and it is suitable for integration in various software products and systems.Hence, the CMS Smart Street light system using UNB technology used in this study is In this study, it is found that the Smart Street Light System using UNB technology CMS has high scalability, security and privacy orientation with user friendly interface.This system is scalable.It is easy especially when there are new street lights, the street lights can be added easily into the system without heavy cabling installation, and easy to set up in the system.Smart Street Light System using UNB technology can support thousands of nodes, the communication is smooth and reachability whenever needed.The Smart Street Light System using UNB technology CMS allows end-user to monitor, control, and access information about LED street lights.

Conclusion
The growing penetration of Smart Street Lights international worldwide has resulted a variety of challenges and high opportunity for improvement in this street light system.In this paper, an efficient Smart Street lighting control and monitoring system based on the Ultra Narrowband (UNB) technology is studied.Smart Street Light System using UNB technology is a wireless network with a low power consumption and the frequency of the system range from 915MHz to 923 MHz.UNB communication technology is known to have long range communication within 10 km and can be up to 15km depends on the area of communication.UNB communication technology uses unlicensed spectrum for its IoT.Smart Street light system using UNB technology has demonstrated a reliable performance in terms of its communication connectivity, reachability from the Street Light Controller to the server through the Data Collector.This Smart Street light system using UNB technology using the bi-level wireless communication network has demonstrated their Central Management Software (CMS) functions able to remotely manage the Smart Street Light System, able to control, able to monitor, able to configure and perform management control of the Smart Street Light System whenever needed.
In terms of interoperability, Smart Street Light System using UNB technology is TALQ (open standard for smart city protocol) compliant.The CMS Smart Street light system using UNB technology used in this study is capable to integrate and to be compatible with any other open protocol hardware solution available in TNB Distribution System In addition, with this Smart Street Light system, street lights failure can be identified immediately and repaired accordingly, thus providing a happy community.Smart Street Light System using UNB technology is capable to manage thousands of street lights under one system.On top of all the benefits, this feasibility study of Smart Street Light system has brought Malaysia Power Utility, TNB one step nearer towards a smart nation.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Smart Street Light using UNB technology system architecture

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Control Monitoring System for UNB Based on the site monitoring and evaluation, the Smart Street Light System using UNB technology has successfully reached minimum of 10km (as per its specification) in terms of distance between Street Light Controller to its Data Collector.