Imagine, you are on the way to an important meeting – by car, searching for a parking spot somewhere in the center of a city and losing valuable time with every minute driving. According to an estimate by Research Association for Automotive Technology (FAT), 560 million hours are spent every year in Germany for parking search, not to mention the waste of fuel.
A solution is provided by smart parking systems, guiding you to free parking spots nearby. For this, parking spots will be equipped with sensor modules sending location coordinates and occupancy status to a cloud based service, from where it can be looked up via Smartphone App or Navigation System.
What is the benefit of doing this with NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT)? Conventional systems allow the connection of sensors to the Internet mainly in “signal-friendly” areas above-ground like streets and public places. NB-IoT offers increased coverage suited for signal-challenging areas as buildings, basements or tunnels, expanding the parking spot search also to underground parking garages. Low device and infrastructure costs enable the installation of a cost-efficient sensor network; ultra-low power consumption secures long battery life and reduces maintenance.
Parking spot search via NB-IoT is a vision that may soon become reality. Pilots to roll out NB-IoT based parking systems in Hamburg and Bonn have already been announced.