IoT-enabled parking management system using LoRaWAN

As the Internet of Things (IoT) evolves, it paves the way for vital smart city applications, with the Smart Parking Management System (SPMS) standing as a prime example. This research introduces a novel IoT-driven SPMS that leverages Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) technology, termed as IoT-SPMS-LoRaWAN, to surmount typical restrictions related to communication range, energy usage, and implementation cost seen in traditional systems.

Parking availability in almost every suburban area is always limited, and searching for a vacant parking spot is time-consuming and leads to traffic congestion, air pollution, fuel waste, and driver frustration. Moreover, development in cities leads to traffic problems, where searching for parking slots can cause up to 30% of inner-city traffic congestion. In contrast, some parking lots have low utilization rates but drivers do not reach them because of lack of real-time information. Accordingly, using a smart parking management system that gathers real-time data about parking spots around the city and makes them available to the public is necessary. 

The IoT paradigm

Various smart parking systems (SPSs) are available in the market including sensors for detecting vehicles in parking spaces and access control to allow a vehicle to enter and exit conveniently. However, the development of the parking-guided system plays the biggest role in the newest SPS technology in public or private parking areas. The reason is the influence of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm to automate and improve daily lives by utilizing new technologies. The IoT depends on smartphone applications to update data to a central server. It improves network scalability, data security, and transmission reliability and presents features, such as real-time analysis and event processing. IoT also provides historical data trends, alerts, and notifications; in addition, it collects device data and turns it into actionable insights.

Limitations in existing smart systems

The concept of an IoT-based parking system uses sensors to monitor parking slots availability and a graphical user interface (GUI) for the end-user to check its status and book it accordingly. However, most of them have limitations in terms of the microcontroller processing capabilities, the sensitivity of the detection methods, and the system interface. In addition, most of the implemented parking monitoring systems are locally operated and lack real-time information to the driver about where to find a parking space. They are used in either wired networks or short-range communication technologies like Bluetooth, ZigBee, Wi-Fi, and RFID which are not reliable in scenarios of indoor and outdoor parking and have many issues related to interference, energy consumption, and limited resources.

Long Range Wide Area Network Technology

The evolution of smart parking has had many motivations, and among them is the utilization of long-range technologies, such as Long-Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN). This study proposes to implement LoRaWAN into the SPS. LoRa is a patented technology for wireless communication of IoT and the LoRaWAN, a low-power and wide-area networking protocol with an open specification that supports long range technology. The topology of the networks is star-of-stars with a gateway that forwards the data from the nodes to the IoT server.

The LoRa technology can be easily plugged into the conventional infrastructure to enable low-cost, low-data rate and battery-operated IoT applications. It supports secure, two-way communication for IoT applications that scales to connect millions of potential devices. The LoRaWAN protocol was designed with authentication and encryption built into the specification itself for security purposes. Single-LoRa gateway devices can handle thousands of end devices or nodes. This technology may be applied to big spaces of parking lots.

A virtual parking lot plan layout was designed to decide the placement of sensors, gateway, and parking area. Only one LoRaWAN gateway will be implemented to receive all the information from the sensor as its range can reach up to 10 km. The sensor will be implemented on the ground for each parking lot. An LED light is installed on the ceiling for each parking lot, which turns green when there is no vehicle and red otherwise. A microcontroller with a LoRa interface is used to build the smart sensor node, and an ultrasonic sensor is used for vehicle detection, with a gateway to provide fast data analysis, thereby speeding up the uploading of information to the cloud. The gateway will be updated on the data about parking availability in real-time to the IoT platform to be accessed by end users.

How it will work

When a user wants to access the Smart Parking System, his mobile phone or laptop needs to connect to the Internet to view the real-time information of the parking lot status. The gateway placed in the parking area needs to be connected to the Internet as well to receive and send data to the network server. The smart parking node will start to send the data detected by the waterproof ultrasonic sensor and magnetometer to the TTN through the gateway. If the distance of the waterproof ultrasonic sensor is less than 40 cm and the magnetic field strength is more than 225, then the red LED (occupied) will light up as a local indicator in the parking lot. If not, the green LED indicating vacancy will be visible. Drivers can explore this information through the GUI using Internet-connected devices.

Physical validation and Conclusion

The proposed system has been deployed and validated in a real parking lot as a single node with a single gateway and has performed effectively. The system can be extended to collect data on the duration of the car parked for bill calculation and automatic bill payment for e-money application users and any online banking pre-linked to the application. In future studies, it is proposed to implement multiple sensing nodes in a multi-parking space. The plan is to conduct tests under various weather conditions such as snow and rain to ensure the system’s robustness. Ultimately, the goal is to design a compact, water-resistant iteration with a higher infill rate to withstand adverse conditions like flooding and high pressure.

Content Courtesy: Science Direct. White paper by Waheb A. Jabbar from College of Engineering, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment, Birmingham City University, UK and Lu Yi Tiew and Nadiah Y. Ali Shah, Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technology, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, 26600, Pekan, Pahang, Malaysia.