Sierra Wireless announced that Liveable Cities, a division of Canada-based LED Roadway Lighting, has selected Sierra Wireless’ LPWA solution to enable smart city applications. Liveable Cities is using Sierra Wireless Ready-to-Connect HL78 modules for its SilQ Luminaire streetlight and the tool-less Sensor Platform (TSC) ANSI Controller, which can add radar, pollution and noise sensors to transform any streetlight into a network that provides data to cities to help them reduce pollution and keep citizens safe.
The Sierra Wireless Ready-to-Connect HL78 embedded module is a small multimode LPWA module, offering ideal power performance for global LTE-M, NB-IoT and GNSS networks. The integrated operator-agnostic smart SIM simplifies global deployment, and all SIM subscriptions and devices can be managed using the AirVantage IoT Platform.
The HL7800 module for Cat-M1/NB1 worldwide networks is fully compliant with the 3GPP Release 13 standard and is Release 14 ready to support NB2 features in the future, providing low-cost, power technology for low-bandwidth IoT applications with extended reach beyond traditional cellular.
Delivering up to 300Kbps download speed and 375Kbps upload speed, this module is ideal for simple static sensor applications, or real-time fixed or mobile applications such as asset tracking and monitoring, industrial equipment, consumer wearables, smart city, healthcare and agricultural monitoring devices.
Design now with LPWA modules in the CF3 form factor and scale to 3G or 4G networks in the future as the application evolves.
Ready-to-Connect modules provide low TCO for OEMs and system integrators. By reducing IoT management costs and eliminating SIM logistics and truck rolls to resolve connectivity issues, Ready-to-Connect bundles reduce TCO by up to 40 percent, compared to other available embedded modules. Customers can work with one vendor for their IoT infrastructure and avoid the complex pairing of multiple components that can lead to security vulnerabilities.
The Sierra Wireless LPWA solution connects sensors integrated in the Luminaire streetlight or TSP platform and securely transmits speed, pollution and noise data over cellular networks to Liveable Cities’ SMARTLINX cloud platform for analysis.
City planners can use the data to understand speed, pollution and acoustic patterns across the city, evaluate effectiveness of reduction measures over time and make informed decisions about where to deploy additional resources.
“Municipalities are asking for solutions that will help them make evidence-based decisions and measure the outcomes of their initiatives in real time,” said Ken Cartmill, vice president of product development, LED Roadway Lighting. “Using cellular was the best approach, and Sierra Wireless’ LPWA solution allowed us to get to market two to three months faster by streamlining our development and deployment process. Our customers can securely connect the TSP-Radar platform anywhere in the world.”
The ubiquity of streetlights allows municipalities to deploy sensors anywhere in the community for lighting scheduling, asset management, energy reporting, traffic analytics and more. The tool-less TSP platform can be installed into virtually any streetlight in 15 seconds.
“Now that we can help cities understand traffic patterns and management strategies, a logical next step is to help them understand the impacts of congestion on air quality and other factors,” added Cartmill.
“Liveable Cities is making smart city applications practical and accessible by allowing communities to leverage their existing streetlighting infrastructure,” said Ross Gray, VP, Product Management, Sierra Wireless. “Sierra Wireless’ LPWA solution provides the secure, reliable device-to-cloud connectivity needed for cost-effective smart city solutions.”
