UK-based company Telensa has raised $18m in funding from European and US banks to meet the growing demand for its wireless smart city systems.

The $18m financing includes equity funding from the Environmental Technologies Fund and debt funding from Silicon Valley Bank in the US.

Telensa is a provider of smart street lighting, parking and other ‘smart city’ applications that are based on low-power wide area (LPWA) wireless technology.

"This investment is recognition of Telensa’s success and enables us to expand to meet the growing demand for our solutions."

Its wireless applications, including the smart streetlight system, have been installed in more than 50 cities and regional networks across eight countries, with a project footprint covering more than one million streetlights.

Telensa uses its LPWA ultra-narrow band (UNB) radio system, which combines low-cost, long-range, long battery life and two-way communication.

According to Machina Research, with a 3.8 billion connections, LPWA applications will dominate wireless, wide area, machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity by 2024.

The company made two of the largest deployments of smart parking system in Moscow, Russia, and Shenzhen, China.

The company claimed that it is witnessing robust demand for its technology due to the global rollout of energy-efficient LED street lights, with their connection to a network becoming mandatory, as it helps to boost energy savings, reduce maintenance costs and allow flexible lighting control.

Telensa CEO Will Gibson said: "The smart city controls market is awash with pilot applications looking for a business case, LPWA networks waiting for a critical mass of devices, and vendors hoping for a path to profit.

"We’re different. Our networks are proven at commercial scale and our applications are sold on a sustainable business case.

"This investment is recognition of Telensa’s success and enables us to expand to meet the growing demand for our solutions."

Environmental Technologies Fund founder and partner Patrick Sheehan said: "Telensa’s success is built on robust wireless technology and an application business case that works for the whole ecosystem. We look forward to helping the team accelerate the growth of this thriving business."