International Journal of Computer Engineering and Information Technology

VOL. 8, NO. 8, August 2016, 141145

Available online at: www.ijceit.org
E-ISSN 2412-8856 (Online)

The Role of Current Technology in Street Light System

Engr.Farman Ali1, Engr.Muhammad Athar Suri2, Engr.Sajid Ullah Khan3, Engr.Shareef Ullah Khan4 and
Engr.Tanzeel Ur Rehman5

1, 4
Electrical Engineering Department Iqra National University, Peshawar Pakistan
2, 3, 5
Electrical Engineering Department Sarhad University of Science and IT, Peshawar Pakistan
1
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
5
[email protected]

ABSTRACT that a driver can be prepared for cross traffic or get ready
The latest trend in the technologies related to wireless to turn onto a side street.
communication has led to the emergence of several engineering GSM based street light automation is basically used to
designs for human requirements. The creeping interests in the control street light automatic by the help of GSM module
wireless and GSM based projects, we came up with this idea of (global system for mobile communication).It is designed to
developing a simpler, multipurpose, cost-effective design to
control the on-off street lights via short message service (SMS).
performing & increase the efficiency of street light even
Commands are sent to street light for night lighting Applications more during in nights. It consists of an PIC16F873A
system through user mobile as data through SMS (Short Service microcontroller which on setting of time delays switches
Messages) providing a cost effective, reliable far reaching access ON/OFF the street lights and sends the update through a
to the user. The coded SMS is sent to the light relay system to phone to the specified phone number[1]. This is the best
base station controller that receives the messages, decodes the way of managing a street light system. There are two
messages, initiates required automation operations and responds modules client server & server side. The client server
to the successful initiations by a reply to the user. consists of GSM module which is connected to the
. microcontroller. The server side consists of web server; it
Keywords: Street lights, remote monitoring, Todays Technology, has a core engine which interacts with the user, database
WSN,GSM. and the GSM communication manager. By applying the
proposed system, streets can be illuminated with lower
power consumption lamps, low operating cost, and low
1. INTRODUCTION CO2 emissions and environmentally friendly. it is best
used without any disadvantage as compared to other.
A Street light is a light installed at the edge of a roadway to Street lights are usually controlled manually by local
illuminate the side of the road. The history of lighting authority through some local switches which is installed in
streets and roadways is ancient, with evidence that many their control unit. Operator must have a physical access of
communities in the Ancient World encouraged citizens to a control unit therefore presence of an operator is needed to
keep outside lights burning through the course of the be in the control unit room by the time of controlling street
evening for navigation and safety. The earliest formal light.
street lights operated as a municipal service were gas It is also quite possible that if the operator turns on/off the
lights, which were hand lit by a crew of people every specific street light from the control room but due to
evening. Eventually, gas lighting was replaced with electric broken link or some other reason, the street light remains in
lighting, and street lights today are usually fully automated. its old state. Therefore this becomes more critical when
The purpose of a street light is not to illuminate the control unit and place where street lights are actually
roadway; at night time, drivers should be using headlights, installed are far away from each other hence a feedback is
which will illuminate the road for them. Street lights light required to give acknowledgment to the operator that
up the side of the road, alerting drivers to potential hazards whether control is successfully done or not.
and situations which they need to be aware of. They can Two main objectives of the proposed structure are.
also be used to signal the presence of an intersection, so
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E.F. Ali et. al

To monitor the status of street lights from any

remote area through an SMS.
To control the status of a specific street light
through SMS.
For this paper, the model of street light is made of
microcontroller. The model uses LED to represent the
street light. This project consists of a system that will
continuously sense the command SMS which has a
predefined format, if received, it turn on/off the specific
street light. And also it will automatically send an
acknowledgment SMS to the user that this particular street Fig.1. Block diagram of fuzzy-fault identification system
light is turn on/off.
3. WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK (WSN)
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Urban areas witness tremendous increase of vehicular
Literature review is a study from the previous publications traffic. Traffic management and surveillance by using
that is related to this architecture. It is showing how others traditional methods become inefficient in terms of
solve their problem to achieve their objective of the paper. performance, cost and maintenance with the increased
Four related journal was selected as reference which is traffic. This paper proposed a Wireless Sensor Networks
Smart Monitoring Fault Detection System for Malfunction (WSN).
Traffic Light, A Study of Wireless Sensor Network WSN technology has a potential to overcome these
Architectures and Projects for Traffic Light Monitoring, difficulties, and will have a great added value to intelligent
Traffic Monitoring Enforcement System using Computer transportation systems (ITS). Wireless sensor can produce
Vision, and GSM Based Cost Effective Street Lighting in small size and low cost by developments in embedded
Application. Some people come with much solution while Systems and wireless technology. The several advantage of
others use a simple way to solve the problem. WSN is enabled wireless communication, cheaper and
In addition, it will give some brief idea of the technology flexibility to overcome existing difficulties of ITS. The
used for other project. The revision about the device or exchange of information can be performed either through
component that use such as GSM modem, PIC ad-hoc communication, or using infrastructure, or hybrid.
microcontroller and LED discussed in detail in proposed Two types of sensors were distinguished which is on-road
diagram. As a result, improvement can be made for some sensors and on-vehicle sensors. The result of combination
other benefit. of sensor types and communication paradigms is various
A smart monitoring fault detection system has been wireless sensor network architectures for ITS applications
developed to monitor the traffic light operation in rural as illustrated in Figure 2. Ad-Hoc paradigm does not have
area or small city. The Fuzzy-Fault Identification and a specific backbone but they exchange and forward
Fuzzy- Fault Classifications are two modules which collected data in an ad-hoc manner. All the above sub
employed as the subsystems in fault detection system. Both classes in infrastructure enable can be found but with the
of the modules are used to classify the level of seriousness presence of base stations (BSs) that can be also relayed to
for traffic light failure based on two factors of failures each other or to servers and Internet through either wireless
which are electrical fault and mechanical fault. The or wired links[11].
seriousness of the traffic light failures are classified to four
conditions such as normal, non-critical 1, non-critical 2 and
critical and a signal will be sent to the contractor and
authority department via message service for further
action. Thus, it is a more effective system and has a bright
prospect to be implemented in Malaysia [7]. Figure 1
shows the block diagram of fuzzy-fault identification
system.

Fig. 2. WSN Architectures for ITS[5]

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5. SHORT MESSAGE SERVICES (SMS)

4. OVERVIEW ON GSM
SMS known as text message services is a communication
GSM is a technology of a digital cellular communication protocol to exchange short text messages between fixed
and was applying in many mobile communications line or mobile phone devices. The geographical factors
especially mobile phones. The sending signal will divide and the capability of the technology made the usage of
by time to make sure the sending data will arrive at the SMS become constraints [8]. This project uses SMS as
destination. GSM offer a wide range of transmission and primary communication mechanism to send a detailed
services like voice, data and internet access. GSM is a failure. The one reason we choose SMS because it is
global standard for wireless communications as well as a relatively cheap, costing somewhere from RM 0.01 to RM
cellular technology widely used around the world. GSM 0.20 to send a message, and for many plans it is free to
modem specifies the command such as: text messaging, receive messages This system will use SMS as a
calling a given Phone number, deleting memory locations telecommunication field between systems and responsible
etc. GSM modem is control by computer by using AT- department. Good urban and rural cellular coverage is
command. Both dial-up modems and GSM modems becoming the case in much of the developing world. A
support a common set of standard AT commands. Its can single short message comprises of words or numbers or an
use a GSM modem just like a dial-up modem. For this alphanumeric combination can be up to 160 characters or
project, only AT- command will be implementing because 140 characters of text in length. Non-text Based short
the GSM module just send the SMS to the responsible messages are also supported[5]. A message SMS is
department [14]. delivery through a Short Message Service Center (SMSC)
Furthermore, it can connect to the computer by using that is computers within the operator's network that receive
RS232 serial port to make calls, receive/send messages and the messages and route them to the recipient with some
deal with other business transactions[7]. GSM modem use flexibility. The information in traditional SMS service does
wireless network and behaves like dial-up modem. The not provide encryption before its transmitting [9].
difference between dial-up modem and wireless modem is
dial-up modem use fix telephone line while wireless
modem uses radio wave to send and receive data[15]. Like 6. BLOCK DIAGRAM
a GSM mobile phone, a GSM modem requires a SIM card
from a wireless carrier in order to operate. GSM modem is Figure 4 shows the block diagram for the system. Based
shown in Figure 2.4. on the block diagram, it shows the microcontroller will
AT is the abbreviation of Attention and a specific take any SMS from GSM modem also update system
command language. AT-Command used as instruction to status through LCD if it gets proper command it will turn
control the modem. "AT" or "at" are the starting on/off street light led through relay and send back
Command for a line and that why the modem called as AT acknowledgment to the sender, telling about the current
Command Usually, these command were used to control status and location of a street light.
wired dial-up modem, such as ATD (Dial), ATA (Answer),
ATH (Hook control) and ATO (Return to online data
state), are also supported by GSM/GPRS modems and
mobile phones[6].

Fig. 3. GSM modem[17]

Fig. 4. Functional Block diagram
In addition, GSM/GPRS modems and mobile phones
support an AT Command set that is specific to the GSM
technology, which includes SMS-related commands like 7. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
AT+CMGS (Send SMS message), AT+CMSS (Send SMS
message from storage), AT+CMGL (List SMS messages) For software implementation, Mikro C pro for PIC
and AT+CMGR (Read SMS messages). programming language was used to program the
 International Journal of Computer Engineering and Information Technology (IJCEIT), Volume 8, Issue 8, August 2016 144
E.F. Ali et. al

microcontroller. The flow chart for the system is shown in Output unit Testing
Figure 5. The microcontroller will initialize when the
This project has output components like LCD and leds
power supply switch O
which need to be tested to confirm what is going on in the
As shown in the figure 5, system is started by initializing
circuit. Test is passed if it gives output as expected i.e.
all hardware and software components like LCD, GSM
according to the code that we have written[13].
module, interrupts and all the variables that will be used
First when system is started, LCD gives the message
later. Once initialization is done it will keep waiting for an
waiting for the system to be stable after which it gives
SMS to come, when SMS is received, first it is processed,
message initializing which indicated that system is in
by extracting the actual message from the whole SMS, then
initialization mode. After initialization is done, it gives the
after the extraction it is checked whether SMS received is
message that system is ready means that system is ready
in command format like #a1 where # must be send to
to receive SMS. All leds that represent street lights should
recognize the message as an command SMS, if command
remain off in this process[15].
is received then it will extract the actual command in
When SMS is received, LCD will display that specific
which the second letter represent a specific street light like
street light which is turn on/off by showing message like
a, b, c etc and the third one is considered as the status that
street light1 is turn on/off, also the corresponding led
operator wants for the street light like 1 for on and zero for
should change its status according to the status bit. After
off. Relays are turns on/off according to the status bit and
some time LCD will display message feedback SMS is
after that for feedback an acknowledgment SMS is send to
sending to indicate that acknowledgment is sending to the
the operator to confirm that the specific operation did
operator. After which it will show system is ready
happened. In the meantime LCD is updated to show the
message to indicate that microcontroller is again ready for
corresponding events.
the next SMS to receive.

9. CONCLUSION
As a conclusion, this project is successfully design and
tested. Two objectives were figured out in this project after
researches about monitoring system of street light and
GSM modem have made. Setting up the objectives is the
first and the most important task in this project. When the
Fig. 5. Flow chart[16] vision of objective was clear, the development of project
step takes place. In addition, a review on journal that
After this the system again goes to start point where it relevant to the project was done to gain more idea and
again waits for another SMS to come. Interrupt methods latest technology implementation. Some journal uses as
are used instead of polling to ensure the power reference to increase the scope of limitation. The
consumption and the microcontroller will remain in sleep methodology process was conduct after gathering the
mode if nothing is happening but as soon as message is information. In this process, focuses were given to
received it will jump to the required process finish the job hardware implementation and software implementation. A
and come again to the sleep mode. detailed hardware implementation gives a good result in
term of design and cost consumption. At the same time, the
programming design was conducted to make sure the
8. RESULT AND DISCUSSION hardware meets the objectives. The next process was
testing and data gathering. The testing was conducted stage
The test result for hardware and software of the system is
by stage to monitor result. The result was tabulated and
shown. The testing was done stage by stage to make sure
analyzed. Based on result analysis, it shows that the project
the hardware and software functions as designed. The
meet all the objective requirements.
testing was divided into two stages: Output unit Testing
and SMS unit testing. Then, the discussion was done based
on the result of the test.
International Journal of Computer Engineering and Information Technology (IJCEIT), Volume 8, Issue 8, August 2016 145
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