Low Power Area Network Sensors for Smart Parking

The Internet of Things consists of installing sensors for everything and connecting them to the Internet for information exchange for localization, tracking, monitoring and management. Smart parking is a typical IoT application that can provide many services to its users and parking owners. In order to create technological solutions for smart parking, an intelligent platform, known as Techpark, was designed. This platform consists of a web-based parking management system, an application for map view availability of parking lots, wireless sensor network controllers and car presence sensors. The car presence sensor was developed using Low Power Area Network technology with a SoC CC430 and an HMC5883L magnetometer. Results achieved by the sensor were promising, with a range of about 100 m, using radio frequency communication in the 900MHz band, and with sensor life, using a battery with two 8.6 AH cells, estimated to be 8 years.