Can Smart City Poles Be Installed On Highways?

Urban road lighting is a crucial component of urban public infrastructure. With the advancement of urbanization, the number of streetlights is increasing. Furthermore, smart streetlights are being installed on fully enclosed highways. These poles are equipped with intelligent communication and sensing systems, including smart lighting, video surveillance, 5G base stations, Wi-Fi, and emergency broadcasts. This system integrates multiple poles into one, integrating emerging technologies such as big data, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence to monitor and disseminate real-time information on traffic conditions, safety hazards, and weather hazards, contributing to the development of smart highways. Below, smart street light factory Phoebus discusses key considerations for planning smart streetlights in highway scenarios.

Phoebus smart city poles support remote dimming and automatic fault reporting, achieving energy savings of over 40%. ISO9001 and CE certifications are also available, and they have served smart transformation projects in over 30 cities. Customizable functional combinations are available, providing efficient and reliable hardware support for smart urban upgrades.

(1) The "shadow" problem of road lighting

Due to unreasonable design, the distance between the lamps is too large or the maximum illumination angle of the light distribution curve along the longitudinal direction of the road is too small, resulting in too low illumination between the lamps. In this way, the road surface will be "bright and dark", which brings great visual fatigue to the driver.

(2) The "shadow" between the horizontal street lamps

Due to unreasonable design, the height of the lamp pole and the elevation angle of the lamp are not sufficient, or the maximum illumination angle of the light distribution curve along the transverse direction of the road is too small, resulting in too low illumination in the center of the road surface, which also brings many inconveniences to the driver.

(3) The illumination problem of fully enclosed highways

The main problem that highway lighting needs to solve is how to enable the driver to quickly and accurately receive the necessary visual information (such as whether there are obstacles on the road, the relative position, speed, road brightness and line shape of the front and rear vehicles, etc.) when the car is driving at high speed at night, so that he can respond in time to prevent traffic accidents caused by insufficient sight distance in advance and increase the sense of safety and comfort of night driving. However, there is an important problem in the usual lighting design, that is, excessive illumination causes a waste of resources. As we know, highways are fully enclosed roads with no pedestrians or non-motorized vehicles. Except for key sections and bridges where illumination can be appropriately increased, other locations do not require too high illumination to meet the needs of safe driving.

(4) Site selection and planning for 5G Micro-Base Stations for smart streetlights on highways

As the most widely distributed and densely populated municipal infrastructure, smart streetlights on highways can meet the site requirements of 5G ultra-dense networking. The distance between street light poles is generally between 20 and 30 meters, while the distance between 5G micro-base stations is required to be between 100 and 200 meters. By integrating a 5G system on each light pole, the number of street light poles can fully meet the needs of communication operators for site construction. The construction of 5G base stations for smart streetlights on highways needs to be combined with the layout of surrounding base stations, comprehensively consider the needs of operators, and rationally plan the layout.

This is what Phoebus, the smart street light factory, shared today. There is much more to know about smart streetlights, so please look forward to our next content.