Zero-energy wake up for power line communications in smart cities

Abstract

Street lighting is responsible for 6% of the greenhouse global gases emissions and for 19% of the total use of electrical energy; nevertheless it is essential for citizens safety in streets. The migration to smart lighting introduces the problem of power consumption of the intelligent infrastructure in standby mode, which was not present in classic lighting. In this paper, we show how to eliminate the power consumption in listening mode with power line communication (PLC) infrastructure, adding zero-power wakeup receivers to the modems. This promising solution can be extended as a general technology for monitoring and controlling in a smart grid distribution. We show the design of the different hardware sections and, supported by simulations and experimental results, we discuss some considerations about the most efficient configurations and the best routing to wake up a remote PLC modem with the minimum power.