Italtel: Not only TLC but also IoT
Italtel and IoT
Italtel has always acted as a leader in technological innovation of communications between people (voice, data, multi-media). Nowadays, the world is moving towards the network connection of everything, people and things. In this scenario strongly evolving, Italtel has increased its technology focus by offering tools and systems to connect with the universe of the objects, the Internet of Things or better Internet of Everythings, which is developing unimaginable scenarios, to raise awareness informational, optimize behavior and functions, provide useful services and decrease resources usage. The most unimaginable things, those encircling us, connected thanks to the Internet of Things, become more intelligent and can make daily life straightforward or provide better services. Just think about an electric socket, if it’s connected to internet, you can switch on/off remotely the household appliances or produce information about consumption or it can coordinate with other electric sockets installed at home, to decide what knock off from the network in case of overload.
Italtel with reference to this opportunity has wanted to catch it, by undertaking the challenge of i-Next project.
Available vertical applications and use cases
i-NEXT project develops typical use cases in the fields: Smart Grid, Smart Energy, Smart Mobility, Smart Lighting and System Management and it can be tested on site of Italtel at Carini.
Hereafter some examples of available use cases.
Light on motion
It manages the night-time LED lighting of public areas based on switch-on logic: at an established hour the night-time lighting is minimized according to a pre-set policy. In the presence of a vehicle or a person in the monitored area the lighting intensity changes to improve the visibility of the path, by alerting the neighbouring lighting poles to the monitored area, depending on the direction of the vehicle / pedestrian, lighting up immediately the areas under control. It is important to take into consideration the use of the power supply of the lighting poles (power-line) as a backbone communication between the poles and the center.
Light on storm
Ii is an application to switch on the lighting poles configured in a given area in case of heavily rain in that area, preventing a normal visibility even in daylight hours. The feasibility of this use case depends on the correlation of the data relating to the survey of environmental parameters, of weather station device.
Parking check
It checks the occupation of a parking lot for reservation. The application detects the car presence and the authorization to access, sending alerts.
Additional use cases have been developed and are available for Smart Light, Smart Mobility, Smart Grid and Smart Energy Management.
Background, driver and targets
Italtel developed the Service Centre: the core system, that collects all the data coming from several devices and remote sensors.
Italtel commitment was to bypass some critical points of the existing technological context:
- being about specific aspects of IoT (energy, lighting, mobility, etc.)
- difficulty to integrate sensors and devices of different kind, by expected
- effort to deal further IoT sectors
In this direction, Italtel provided the Service Centre, characterized by:
- a standard ETSI M2M platform
- a software architecture
- ready to use existing company assets
- open to extension of
vertical applications that the market sector could gradually request - based on OM2M, an open source software platform developed by CNR France; the software architecture consists of common modules usable by all applications and a reusable framework to implement additional vertical applications
- a standard gateway M2M-ETSI focused on:
- portability of innovative services created on remote sites
- segregation of the functionality and the traffic, and to improve safety and to hierarchically organize the whole system
- management of the communication channel with the adapter, by virtualizing the complexity of communication between sensors and remote devices (also legacy)
- an adapter able to:
- interconnect any type of sensor and device, regardless of channel type and exchanged signals
- communicate with the Service Centre according to paradigm M2M-ETSI, converting legacy and “not smart” sensors and devices into standard and “smart” ones
The adapter has been based on micro-processor Arduino Yùn that allows to add specific shields for interfacing as: serial, ethernet, wi-fi, bluetooth, zigbee, etc.
It can host a small Linux operating system on which it is possible to build the standard adapting functionalities of M2M–ETSI.
Reached goals
i-Next Service Centre has profusely achieved the proposed goals, working so that all requirements were met and the future extension of applications were low cost and effort. Prototypes are scalable, modular, with increasing functionalities and they can be installed on a standalone server or in cloud, available with SaaS paradigm. Functional platform is M2M standard ETSI, able to interconnect legacy devices/sensors with an effective availability of 4 advanced vertical applications developed in the following fields:
- Monitoring and management of parking lots and vehicles (vehicles with innovative hybrid propulsion, electric/hydrogen)
- Optimization Lighting of wide areas
(public or private) through
multiservices integrated systems (lighting, weather stations detection, wi-fi hotspots, video surveillance, metering) that, also communicating with the power supply network (PLC), can meet the needs of the customer without having additionally extra and expensive infrastructure - Management of energy consumption data of users federated, according to logic like Market Led, System Led, Demande-Response
- Command actions on energy systems with renewable energy sources, innovative storage systems, H2/electric charging stations, to get the wanted energy balances
- Systems management of infrastructure and controlled device
- Collection/forwarding of data adopting standard interfaces (M2M-ETSI and web services) towards north-bound system
- Operator Web GUI and App for users.
The Service Centre is currently under trial by local public administrations (Palermo and Capo D’Orlando) and their delegates (AMAT -Municipalized company for Transportation and AMG – Municipalized company for gas and public lighting) and so far they found it interesting.
i-Next project
started from two distinct project proposals, Smart Mobility and last-mile logistic and Renewable energy and smart grid, integrated into a single project, on MIUR request (Ministry of Education, University and Research), from a ICT platform focused on management, monitoring and control of devices on different project areas. It participates successfully, in the announcement of Research and Innovation about topic of Smart Cities and Communities and Social Innovation. Industrial and research partners participate on various topics in the field of Smart City and Community:
- Università degli Studi di Palermo
- DARCH (Department of ARCHitecture): optimization mobility flows of Palermo, Smart Planning Lab
- DEIM ((Department of Energy, Information engineering and Mathematical models): Smart Building (System Led, Market Led, Demande-Response), optimizing energy exchanges in the Smart Grid
- CNR ITAE. Innovative hybrid vehicles (electric and hydrogen), complex energy system with innovative energy technologies
- TRE-Tozzi Renewable Energy. Complex energy system with innovative energy
- Exalto. Design, with Italtel, and implementation adapter based over microprocessor for sensors/devices IoT, App and App server for SCC (Smart City & Communication) and IoT services
- Itatel. Design, development and integration of:
- Multiservice Poles System. Hw infrastructure and networking based on a system of LED lighting able to host a wide range of devices and sensors, moving informations through its power supply network (PLC). In the project solution are integrated: weather stations, video cameras, wi-fi hotspots.
- General purpose Service Center. Hw and sw infrastructure that connects, controls and commands IoT sectors supplying SCC services, (Mobility, Lighting -multiservices poles system solution developed by Italtel-, Building & Grid management) but also enables any further IoT and SCC sector.
