Smart Cities Build Opportunities for Urban Infrastructure
Municipal LED Street Lighting is Becoming Smart Street Lighting
It’s becoming more and more apparent that the cities of the future will include features like intelligent LED lighting, smoothly implemented smart cell poles, and other features. This post provides a brief look at how such innovations are coming to life.
An Encouraging Report
The European Pultrusioin Technology Association (EPTA) recently released a report on the future of 5G technology in cities. According to CompositesWorld editor Hannah Mason’s writeup in this report, the years between now and 2025 will see 5G mobile networks become widely available. Those, in turn, will assist with making urban areas more efficiently operated.
Spreading the Technology
Supporting these 5G capabilities will be a “dense network of 5G small cells.” Low in power, those devices receive and transmit 5G signals in a localized area. The EPTA says that materials that allow for better high-frequency-signal performance will be key to these efforts. Another factor will be pultruded building elements. (Pultrusion is a technique for making composite materials.) The hope is that the composite nature of pultruded building materials will allow for 5G signals to penetrate with less signal loss.
Another important factor in making these networks widely available will be light poles. Mason writes that one ongoing project has the goal of developing intelligent light poles. Among outdoor LED lighting projects, these are particularly exciting because they have the space to contain both highly efficient LED lights as well as 5G antennas and hardware. Certain derivations of these poles may also contain cameras, sensors, displays, and other high-tech elements.
The Impact of the Technology
According to an earlier report released by the authors Majed Al Amine, Kenneth Mathias, and Thomas Dyer, 5G technology will be a key to unlocking the full potential of smart cities. The authors expect that compared to previous iterations (like 3G and 4G), 5G network deployment will involve up to 100 times as many antenna locations. Those are needed to support the sheer number of devices that will be using 5G networks.
Using cost estimates and input from industry experts, the authors projected a number of positive impacts stemming from smart cell 5G infrastructure and the like. They estimated that 5G technology will lead to $275 billion in investments from telecom operators, 3 million new jobs, and annual GDP growth of $500 billion for the country. It will also help the economic situation of individual cities; for instance, they estimated that the metro Chicago area will enjoy a GDP growth of $14 billion.
Contact Great Basin Lighting for Help with Smart Street Lighting in CA and NV
Finally, the authors pointed out that 5G technology will greatly facilitate the adoption of smart technology in city infrastructures. They highlighted street lights as being key to unlocking these benefits. Cities will enjoy benefits such as reduced energy usage and lower amounts of downtime, especially when 5G technology advancements are paired with LED lighting. All in all, the next generation of wireless technology is expected to work seamlessly with the newest generation of lighting and other municipal infrastructure elements. Contact the lighting professionals at Great Basin Lighting, a west coast outdoor LED lighting company, for more information on smart cell street lighting solutions.