I

<)

.,___

called network depth. The End Device nodes in a tree topology

do not act as parents. Communication is conducted with certain
restrictions: a node can communicate directly with its parent
and its children.

'@

lCU

The street lighting control systems that use the ZigBee

technology and are currently available on the market are the
following: Owlet Nightshift [ 13] which implements the control
architecture based on a mesh network topology, Lumewave
Wireless Outdoor Lighting Control [14) that also uses a mesh
topology and Jennie Intelligent Lighting Control [ 15) that is
based on a tree network topology. Thus, street lighting control
systems employ tree and mesh network topologies. We will
further provide a detailed comparison between the advantages
and the disadvantages of the two network topologies.

---.----..-------+---'

Figure 2. Proposed Architectul'e

The system must be able to control on/off the lamps and

adjust the light intensity in order to save energy. The system
consists of: control centre, Light Control Unit (LCU) and
Remote Terminal Unit (RTU). The control centre is installed in
the local administration offices and comprises the data
processing units, the software and the network coordinator. The
coordinator collects all the data received from the network. In
this particular network topology the RTU will be an FFD type
(Full Function Device), the LCU nodes of the RFD type
(Reduced Function Device), and thus help significantly reduce
the implementation costs. However, the RTU devices are able
to retransmit the messages in the network. The LCU terminal
does not cover the routing of messages. The detailed proposed
architecture is presented in a related work [ 1].
IU.

TABLE!.

Advantages
Tree
Highly efficient
for sink node
applications.
Routing tables
are smaller and.
implicitly, use
RAM
less
memory.

NETWOK TOPOLOGIES

The spacing between light poles in a street lighting control

system is of about 50 meters. By designing a street lighting
control system based on the JEEE 802.15.4 standard that also
includes the ZigBee communication protocol, each lamp is part
of an intricate and sophisticated network and thus becomes a
node. A street lighting control system entails the presence of a
large number of devices spread over a wide geographical area.
The addition of communication facilities to these devices also
requires the design of a very intricate network topology. Due to
the LOS conditions (Line-of-Sight), limited by the occurrence
of obstacles, the network must be implemented in a topology
that would ensure a very high performance level. The street
lighting control systems that use the ZigBee wireless
communication protocol are based on a long-thin structure that
stretches on a few kilometers and incorporates a few hundred
nodes.

Incorporate
a
high number of
nodes, with a
high throughput
Scalability that
enables beuer
control over the
network
and
maintains high
performance
levels.

TREE VS. MESH

Mesh

No
communication
restrictions.

are
There
redundant
communication
paths.
for
Ideal
transferring pointto-point

information. Low

end-to-end delay.

Ideal for ensuring

device
interconnections.

Disadvantages
Tree
Communic
ation
restrictions.

A par1 of

the network
may remain
isolated.

High endtoend
delay.

Mesh

Low
performance for
long-thin
networks.
Larger
routing
that
tables
implicitly
use
more
RAM
memory.
Incorporates
a
low number of
nodes
and
produces a low
throughput.
The End Device
nodes that use
the slee1> mode
further limit the
number of nodes.

An assessment of the tree and mesh network topologies has

also been conducted in [16), with the following
findings: tree
f
patterns are less expensive, are more ef icient and can have a
higher number of nodes than mesh topologies. The lighting
control system is based on a long-thin structure stretching on a
few kilometers and incorporating a few hundred nodes.

The oetwork topologies that cao be implemented in a

ZigBee network may be of the type: star, tree and mesh. A star
topology is made up of a central coordinator and a series of
End Devices. Each End Device can communicate only with the
coordinator node. If an End Device wants to communicate with
a second End Device, the message must be sent through the
coordinator that subsequently delivers it to the addressee. Such
a topology cannot be used in a street lighting control system
because the nodes are spread on a very wide geographical area.

The ZigBee communication protocol has implemented the

automatic mode of self-organizing and self-healing network
formation. Thus, in order to avoid the tree pattern disadvantage
that isolates a network section, each network node must be able
to communicate with at least 2 adjacent nodes so that, in the
case of any malfunction, the network would be able to perform
the self-healing operation around the malfunctioning node.
Given the above mentioned advantages and disadvantages, we
could conclude that the tree network topology meets the
performance criteria required for the integration within a
control system. Consequently, a series of simulations have been
performed in order to validate the pe1fonnance of tree and
mesh network topologies.

A mesh topology is based on a coordinator, a set of routers

and a number of End Devices. The communication rules are
more flexible and, thus, nearby nodes can communicate
directly, as opposed to a tree pattern where the End Devices are
the router's children. This hierarchy extends on several levels

131

hops is considerably lower in the former. The initial tree and

mesh network formation interval of the tree and mesh
topologies is of 59.97 seconds and 59.09 seconds, respectively.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This paper was supported by the project "Improvement of

the doctoral studies quality in engineering science for
development of the knowledge based society-QDOC" contract
no. PO SDRU/107/l.5/S/7 8 534, project co-funded by the
European Social Fund through the Sectorial Operational
Program Human Resources 2007-20L3 and by the project
"Knowledge provocation and development through doctoral
research PRO-DOCT- Contract no. PO SDRU/8 8/l.5/S/52946
", project co-funded from European Social Fund through
Sectorial Operational Program Human Resources 2007-2013.

Mesh
16 _________N_u_m_be_r_o_f_H_op_s________
14
12

10

- --

8-t---------------------- -------

6
4

REFERENCES
Tree

Number o1 Hops

16

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14
12

10
8

--- ------------------ ----

0
Oh Om

Oh40m

Oh20m

1h Om

1h20m

Figure 6. Number of hops (Tree and Mesh)

Yl.

CONCLUSIONS

Apart from the selection of the communication protocol,

another very important issue to be tackled when implementing
a street lighting control system is the appropriate network
topology that will support the architecture in such a way as to
reach a very high performance level. The network architecture
of a street lighting control system has a series of specific
characteristics: it is of the long-thin type, it may incorporate up
to a few hundred nodes distributed on a wide geographical area
and it has a central sink node that collects all the data.

[8]
[91

In light of the above essential factors, the objective of this

paper is to assess the performance of the mesh and tree network
topologies that can be implemented within a street lighting
control system based on a ZigBee communication protocol. As
far as the end-to-end delay is concerned, both types of
simulated network topologies behave similarly. When
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divided among the coordinator and the local routers, thus
reducing collisions and the number of lost packages. Therefore,
the performance of the tree network topology far outbalances
the benefits of a mesh topology. The number of hops
performed in a mesh network is much higher than that of a tree
topology. This particuJar characteristic may equate a lower
power consumption than that required by tree network
topologies if the nodes are battery-powered. The tree topology
performs highly better than mesh topologies when
implementing a street lighting control system.

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133