The development history of IOT in the field of street lights.

The application of IOT in the field of street lights is mainly to transform ordinary street lights into smart street lights. In recent years, as the needs of urban management have become clearer and the planning of intelligent scenarios has become clearer, the traditional "Internet of Lights" has gradually been upgraded to smart light poles, assuming more public service functions.

In the early stage of the development of smart light poles, only the "light network" was achieved, that is, the street lights scattered on the streets were managed through the platform to achieve basic functions such as timed switching, brightness adjustment, and fault alarm. As the needs of urban management become clearer and the planning of intelligent scenarios becomes clearer, the "light network" has gradually been upgraded to smart light poles, assuming more public service functions.

Looking at the development and iteration of smart light poles, there are two important characteristics that cannot be ignored-first, the government is an important promoter; second, it develops together with 5G infrastructure.

First of all, as a public infrastructure, the pole deployment and data collection need to be supported by relevant policies and constrained by industry standards.

In terms of policy, relevant national policies have mentioned the requirements for the construction of smart poles since 2018. Although there is no separate national program document for smart light poles, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission have directly or indirectly paved the way for the construction of smart light poles in relevant policies such as telecommunications infrastructure, Internet of Things construction, smart transportation, and smart city policies.

For example, the "Three-Year Action Plan for the Construction of New Infrastructure of the Internet of Things (2021-2023)" clearly proposes to promote the construction and large-scale application deployment of sensing terminals such as smart pipe corridors, smart meters, and smart light poles.

In terms of standards, on March 1, 2022, the first national standard of China's smart light pole industry, "Smart City Smart Multifunctional Pole Service Function and Operation Management Specifications", was officially implemented. This standard applies to multifunctional poles of public facilities such as urban roads, highways, expressways, squares, parks, and courtyards. It stipulates the classification, general requirements, design requirements, layout requirements, functional requirements, safety requirements, and operation service requirements of poles, filling the gap in national standards for multifunctional poles, and will further promote "multi-pole integration, one pole for multiple uses", promote the development of the multifunctional pole industry, and provide important support for building an IoT sensing network and creating a digital base for new smart cities.

Secondly, the generational evolution of communications has always been an important driving force for the upgrade of intelligent scenarios. In the 4G era, driven by the policy of "multiple poles in one, one pole for multiple uses", functions such as one-click emergency call, environmental monitoring, public broadcasting, and intelligent lighting have been implemented on smart light poles. However, some functions are still limited by factors such as bandwidth and latency, and there are problems such as poor video clarity, insufficient data timeliness, and unstable transmission. These pain points can undoubtedly be broken one by one by 5G's large bandwidth, low latency, and high reliability.

On the contrary, smart light poles are also an important boost to 5G network construction. As we all know, 5G requires the construction of a large number of micro base stations to achieve denser network coverage, but there are challenges such as difficulty in site acquisition, high churn rate, and limited roof load during the construction process. Whether from the perspective of height, spacing, coverage, or aesthetics, power supply, etc., smart light poles will become the natural carrier of 5G micro base stations.

Nowadays, with the strong promotion of the country and governments at all levels, densely distributed smart lamp poles have reached the streets like capillaries. Obviously, policy promotion has created obstacles and paved pathways for the development of smart lamp poles, and their own high integration and easy deployment characteristics also contain huge space for innovation in intelligent scenarios, which naturally attracted many companies to join.

The smart pole station is equipped with an edge intelligent gateway, and the hardware gateways of various business systems are converted to software APPs for unified online launch, IoT terminals are uniformly accessed, and sensor data is uniformly collected, which can save 20% of operation and maintenance costs and improve 90% of operation and maintenance efficiency.

The once monotonous and weak lamp poles are now equipped with sensors, 5G micro base stations and other modules, adding a bit of wisdom.

In addition, with the mature application of 5G in more and more industries, smart lamp poles will also become an important infrastructure for scenarios such as autonomous driving, Internet of Vehicles, and high-precision positioning. It can be said that the lamp poles scattered in every corner of the city have supported a small piece of the AIoT world, and are still expanding and integrating.

It is undeniable that the development of the AIoT industry has entered the deep water zone so far, especially under the epidemic and international conflicts, the pressure on the supply chain has doubled. Enterprises not only need to face the important test of crossing the deep water zone, but also need to solve the urgent need for stable supply.