Smart City

Smart cities use advanced IT infrastructure to provide diverse services via wireless data networks such as Wi-Fi, 5G, microwave radio, and IoT radio. These technologies enable mobile access to essential applications like public transport and autonomous vehicles. Street lighting provides an ideal foundation for the comprehensive implementation of these solutions.

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City Area Networks –
The foundation for smart, connected cities

What will the IT infrastructure of the future look like to provide users and edge devices with IP-based services? Experts agree: wireless solutions will dominate. In the access layer, services must be accessible on the move—whether in public transport, autonomous driving, or other applications that need to be available exactly where people and devices require them.

Various frequency ranges are used for this, including:

WLAN
Microwave link
Mobile communications (5G/LTE)
IoT wireless/Narrowband

Existing street lighting infrastructure provides an ideal base for these wireless technologies. It is available everywhere, in both urban and rural areas, is continuously powered (though not always with constant power), has a suitable mounting height for wireless applications, and is largely owned by municipalities.

Lünen Innovation Hub: A living lab for smart cities

To comprehensively test our street-level networks, we have set up a living lab on an 800-meter-long commercial street in Lünen, Westphalia. Here, we are testing various wireless technologies and services, including innovative concepts like Neutral Host.

In doing so, we connect the access layer—that is, network access for edge devices such as notebooks, sensors, robots, and autonomous units (vehicles, drones, etc.)—with fail-safe backbones to reach the various application layers (data centers, clouds, etc.). We combine free and paid services as well as diverse wireless technologies to ensure maximum flexibility and reliability.

Street-level data networks –
The smart and fast solution for modern cities

Our tests show that street-level networks, which we call City Area Networks, can be installed extremely quickly and offer a cost-effective solution for broadband access.

In many large cities, permits for new construction work are often lacking, making it difficult to expand existing fiber-optic networks due to limited capacity.

Terragraph technology, developed by Facebook and Intel, offers an effective solution here: 60 GHz wireless technology enables the rapid deployment of backbones or even backhauls for micro sites in 5G expansion—all at street level.