As cities evolve into smart urban ecosystems, the demand for reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient network infrastructure is at an all-time high. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Smart Street Lighting are at the core of this transformation, providing real-time monitoring, energy efficiency, and seamless connectivity. However, designing and deploying these networks come with significant challenges, including ensuring coverage, maintaining redundancy, and optimizing costs.
Challenges in Smart City Network Design
- Capacity Constraints – Managing collector capacity, device connections, and backhaul availability is crucial to prevent weak coverage areas and network inefficiencies.
- Network Redundancy & Optimization – Ensuring robust topology that eliminates single points of failure and optimizes alternative pathways for seamless operation.
- Cost-Efficient Deployment – Avoiding unnecessary overbuilding while ensuring adequate coverage and reliable performance.
- Visualization & Decision-Making – The ability to analyze and optimize network designs through advanced simulation and visualization tools.
How We Support Smart City Development
Capacity-Constrained Analysis
To ensure networks meet vendor requirements, capacity-constrained analysis plays a crucial role. Factors such as collector capacity, the number of device connections, and backhaul availability must be considered to prevent weak coverage areas. EDX Wireless’ solutions help define collection capacity, hopping limits, and mesh node downstream device distribution, ensuring seamless network performance.
Optimized Topology & Reporting
EDX Wireless’ SignalPro provides in-depth topology reports, offering engineers crucial insights into network redundancy and potential failure points. The reports identify cut nodes, vulnerable areas, and the number of alternative gateways for meters to connect, ensuring there are no weak links that could isolate entire segments of the network.
Streamlining Pre-Sales & Cost-Effective Deployment
The complexity of smart grid and smart lighting networks makes pre-sales planning critical. Poor design can lead to overbuilding and unnecessary expenses, while underbuilding can compromise service quality. With features like automatic site placement, cost-aware analysis, and backhaul planning, SignalPro’s Mesh Network Module enhances network design efficiency, accelerates deployment, and helps companies make accurate budgetary forecasts.
Advanced Optimization & Visualization
A well-balanced smart network requires strategic placement of repeaters and infrastructure to ensure redundancy. EDX’s optimization tools identify network failure points and determine the best locations for repeaters and backhaul routes. The visualization tools provide engineers with interactive maps for placing equipment, overlaying coverage analysis, and visualizing repeater connections, enhancing decision-making accuracy.
Key Benefits of EDX Wireless’ Smart Network Solutions
- Streamline pre-sales activities
- ROI optimization for greenfield and brownfield networks
- Intelligently scale large networks
- Optimize infrastructure investment
- Automate detection of mesh vulnerabilities
- Reduce network optimization cycles
- Shorten time to deployment
- Reduce truck rolls
- Automate cell planning
Empowering the Smart Cities of Tomorrow
With smart grid AMI, smart street lighting, and broader smart city applications, EDX Wireless is helping urban planners and utility providers build efficient, future-ready networks. By integrating advanced planning, optimization, and visualization tools, our solutions drive cost-effective, high-performance deployments, supporting the continued evolution of smart cities worldwide.
For a more in-depth look at our approach and solutions, explore our documentation here: https://edx.com/documents-library/#flipbook-smart-city-smart-street-lighting-and-ami-network-design/1/
