Needless to say, parking has become a major priority for municipal officials striving to make their cities more livable. As a result, they turn to smart parking solutions, which can benefit greatly from the so-called NB-IoT wireless technology.
Needless to say,
parking has become a major priority for municipal officials striving to make their cities more livable. As a result, they turn to
smart parking solutions, which can benefit greatly from the so-called
NB-IoT wireless technology.
The so-called narrowband-IoT is a wireless technology specified in the international 3GPP standard. It differs from the current 4G LTE technology in various aspects. Whereas LTE transmits large amounts of data, as many as several hundred megabits per second, NB-IoT transmits just a few kilobits per second over a long distance, up to 35 kilometers under the 145-169dB uplink MCL. This, then, makes NB-IoT an ideal low-power, long-distance transmission solution for a variety of internet of things devices, including parking sensors.
In fact, the potential for NB-IoT in parking applications is not to be ignored. A recent study by Research and Markets points out that the NB-IoT chipset market is expected to grow from U$272 million in 2019 to $2 billion by 2024 at a compound annual growth rate of 49.1 percent, and parking is a major growth driver.
“Growing adoption of IoT and an increase in the use of connected devices, and rising demand for low-power, low-cost, and long-range connectivity technologies are the key drivers for the growth of this market,” the report said. “Increasing adoption of NB-IoT technology for smart parking application is accelerating its market growth. For instance, in January 2018, Deutsche Telekom (Germany) started deployment of NB-IoT-enabled devices to improve the smart parking system across Hamburg. The company plans to roll-out 11,000 sensors by the end of 2019.”
So what are the benefits of NB-IoT-based smart parking? They are summarized as follows.
Faster transmission process
Smart parking works primarily by way of parking sensors detecting available space and transmitting that data, which will eventually be accessed by the driver via their smart parking app. NB-IoT makes the process easier. “The problem of congested parking lots is caused by people either looking for an available spot or vehicles parked haphazardly because their booking request could not get processed. NB-IoT solves this problem by speeding the process of transmission of requests from the user to operator. All it takes is an app which the users can download onto their smartphones which they can use to book an available spot,” said a recent
blogpost by Get My Parking.
Lower investment
From the parking operator’s perspective, it doesn’t take much to invest in NB-IoT-based smart parking. “As long as a parking facility has the necessary infrastructure such as base stations and a cellular network, it can benefit from the improvements and software updates that come with this breakthrough technology. The system is also designed to be easy-to-install and compact,” the post said.
Greater efficiency
As mentioned earlier, NB-IoT allows wider network coverage. This makes it ideal in a number of parking scenarios. “In old networks, there was a chance of losing track of the car as it went lower into the multi-level parking due to the poor network. With the inception of NB-IoT, this problem is solved,” the post said. Further, with NB-IoT transmits less data,
parking sensors consume less power and can prolong battery life.
A real-life example of using NB-IoT-based smart parking is Nietzsche Enterprise’s NB-IoT parking sensor which works by way of earth magnetism and micro-radar and targets various end users, including meter maids. Whereas in the past they had to walk up and down streets to issue parking tickets, now thanks to parking data transmitted directly to their terminals, they can go to specific parked spaces to issue tickets.