Championing safe and responsible AI development by joining Canada’s Voluntary Code of Conduct on Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Dimonoff Joins Canada’s Voluntary Code of Conduct on Artificial Intelligence Development
Future Readiness in the Context of Smart City Systems – Part 2 of 3
As we discovered in our last article, future readiness for smart city applications implies 3 main challenges:
- Part 1 of 3 – Future readiness in hardware (devices, sensors and controls)
- Part 2 of 3 – Future readiness in network connectivity
- Part 3 of 3 – Future readiness in software
Today we are discovering a little more about future readiness in network connectivity.
Future readiness in network connectivity
Future-Proof Connectivity Standard
There is an abundance of network connectivity options today, that come with various price tags. Many are robust enough to serve for decades to come, but some will become obsolete, even in the space of 6 to 8 years. Especially for network types not owned by the city, like cellular networks, it is essential to understand how long they will be around. Some vendors offer 2G mobile connectivity for their street lighting management systems, even though this standard is being phased out in most of the world. For some regions, 3G is also already in jeopardy. Research the prospects of the connectivity standard you are planning to use and verify the timeline the carriers commit to, in writing, for supporting it, and a good comprehension of the tariffication and Total cost of Ownership over the life of the system.
Future-Proof Bandwidth
Because the street lighting system is often the backbone for other smart city applications, it is important to ensure that its network component (often a wireless mesh network) have enough bandwidth to support them. Furthermore, you need to plan, the present and long-term requirements of your smart city system. You also need to understand what these requirements might mean in terms of network bandwidth:
- Will it be easy (or even possible) to add other types of modules and applications to the current network?
- Can you do a firmware upgrade over-the-air (this involves the transfer of several Kbytes) and how much time will it take?
- Is there a maximum number of messages per day, and what is the maximum size of messages?
- Can the bandwidth be extended later?
These considerations must be balanced carefully against the cost of purchasing bandwidth. Some companies offer solutions where recurring network fees apply for the lifetime of the system, in order to lower the initial cost of material; others, such as Dimonoff, offer a solution where the wireless mesh network is an integral part of the hardware, without any network fees, except for the few gateway that could be connected with a cellular link.
Some type of robust low-band mesh networks can work well combined with intelligent devices at the edge, but scalability (total size of network, including devices for other types of applications) of these networks clearly needs to be validated, in addition to interference immunity, security, latency and capability to do upgrades over the air (OTA), etc. In short, can you tackle all these aspects, for a very large–scale network?
As we are going deeper into readiness, we will discover in our next article more about future readiness in software.
Learn how to choose an open and future-proof smart city system and understand the market in order to choose the best smart city vendor.
