Skip to main content

First deployment for Libelium's Smart Parking sensor platform

Spain-headquartered Libelium, a specialist in wireless sensor networks, has announced the launch of its Waspmote-based Smart Parking platform, part of the company’s smart cities solution designed to be buried in parking spaces and to detect the arrival and departure of vehicles. The company says the platform, which will allow system integrators to offer comprehensive parking management solutions to city councils, will shortly be deployed in Santander, Spain.
January 27, 2012 Read time: 2 mins

Spain-headquartered 740 Libelium, a specialist in wireless sensor networks, has announced the launch of its Waspmote-based Smart Parking platform, part of the company’s smart cities solution designed to be buried in parking spaces and to detect the arrival and departure of vehicles. The company says the platform, which will allow system integrators to offer comprehensive parking management solutions to city councils, will shortly be deployed in Santander, Spain.

Libelium’s Smart Parking sensors can be buried in parking spaces and communicate with the rest of the sensor network using Waspmote’s ZigBee radio. According to Alicia Asín, CEO of Libelium,  “The first deployment of the platform will be with 742 SmartSantander – a unique city-scale experiment in applications of smart city technology which is already considered as a reference in the Smart Cities field”. In fact, the Network Planning and Mobile Communications Group from the University of Cantabria contributed to the testing and performance improvement of the sensor. Initially, 100 nodes are being installed in a pilot while the next phase will cover around 800 nodes in parking slots and street lights, for measuring environmental parameters, but eventually, around 12,000 sensors will be installed over the next three years.

According to Asín, Waspmote’s outstanding power management and over the air programming (OTA) mean that, once installed, parking sensors do not need to be accessed for years. Motes only need to transmit when a parking event – a vehicle arriving or leaving a space – takes place. With suitable batteries a sensor can operate for five years before it needs to be physically accessed for battery replacement. OTA programming enables the software for entire networks to be upgraded efficiently over the radio network without digging up the parking spaces. The low maintenance involved in smart parking sensor networks means that networks with hundreds of nodes can readily be deployed.

Smart parking sensors communicate with their gateway via radios at either 2.4 GHz or 868/900 MHz. For 2.4 GHz ZigBee connections, mesh networks are implemented with routing motes located in street lights. For the lower frequency radios, it is possible for parking sensors to communicate directly with the gateway as the propagation distance is longer.

Related Content

  • February 8, 2016
    Accurate vehicle detection with Radix wired sensors
    Radix Traffic will be featuring at Intertraffic Amsterdam its wired magnetometer sensors, over 500 of which have been installed in the UK to provide accurate vehicle detection. Unlike conventional inductive loops, the sensors can be installed around 50cm below the road surface where they are protected from damage caused by bad weather and heavy traffic. Radix claims that once a sensor is installed it will continue to detect during its 15-year design life with no maintenance required. Radix says installat
  • April 5, 2016
    Radix Traffic features wired magnetometer sensors
    Radix Traffic will be featuring at Intertraffic its wired magnetometer sensors, over 500 of which have been installed in the UK to provide accurate vehicle detection. Unlike conventional inductive loops, the sensors can be installed around 50cm below the road surface where they are protected from damage caused by bad weather and heavy traffic. Radix claims that once a sensor is installed it will continue to detect during its 15-year design life with no maintenance required.
  • November 15, 2012
    M2M smart parking solution
    Spanish telecommunications provider Telefónica and US-headquartered smart parking solutions supplier Streetline have joined forces to offer telematics-enabled smart parking services that allow cities to optimise parking management, while reducing vehicle traffic. The companies have reached an agreement to jointly market M2M (machine to machine) products designed to target the growing smart parking market, initially in Europe and Latin America. The solution will be part of the Telefónica Smart City platform
  • March 21, 2018
    Jaan Innovations present smart parking management system
    India-based Jaan Innovations is using Intertraffic to present a cost-effective smart parking management system that combines an Internet of Things platform with image processing technology. Called Hawkeye, the solution can be utilised as a hardware platform, software platform and mobile application for IOS and Android devices. The gateway is designed with the intention of interfacing with industry standard sensors such as IR, ultrasonic and magnetic sensors and other accessories such as Boom Barriers, LED