Smart city moves to improve capacity and data access

One of the country’s first 5G-enabled smart cities is putting in place networking solutions that are critical for smart cities. Peachtree Corners, Georgia, revealed last month that it had teamed with ACiiST, an Israeli manufacturer of software-defined local-area network solutions, to use a networking system to connect exterior cameras and sensors.

The city has installed the equipment along a half-mile segment of its Technology Parkway, which connects infrastructure network solutions via fibre, as part of the arrangement.

It was difficult to keep the links in the smart city testing environment stable. According to Brandon Branham, Peachtree Corners assistant city manager and chief technology officer, parts of the street were “still on a point-to-point wireless connection for some of the technology, so stabilisation of that part of the corridor was hard.”

ACiiST has “a product where they can take those kinds of scenarios and add a managed switch directly at, in this case, a light pole. We run a fibre link between each pole.”

Data from cameras, wireless connectivity, and other smart infrastructure and communication equipment may now be sent directly to Curiosity Lab’s IoT Central Control Room thanks to the city’s addition of nine poles.