A WSN-Based Building Management Framework to Support Energy-Saving Applications in Buildings

A WSN-Based Building Management Framework to Support Energy-Saving Applications in Buildings

Antonio Guerrieri (University of Calabria, Italy), Giancarlo Fortino (University of Calabria, Italy), Antonio Ruzzelli (University College Dublin, Ireland) and Gregory M.P. O’Hare (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Copyright: © 2012 |Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61350-110-8.ch012

Abstract

Using wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for auditing and managing the energy consumption in a building is an emerging research area that includes a number of novel applications such as activity pattern recognition, adaptive load shifting, and building energy profiling in domestic and industrial settings. This chapter defines the specific requirements for applications of energy management in the building context and proposes a novel framework for building management (BMF) to support heterogeneous platforms. To allow flexible node activity grouping, BMF defines roles and operations derived from the mathematical set theory, while it optimizes transmissions through a mechanism of adaptive packet size. BMF has been implemented and tested in TinyOS. Results show an increase in reliability with respect to existing transmission schemes that can be traded off to reduce energy consumption.
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Building Management: Requirements And Objectives

Many new structures incorporate energy management systems such as intelligent lighting, HVAC control systems that allow profiling the energy spent in the building. However, a much larger portion of existing buildings do not have any energy monitoring retrofitted. WSNs represent an appropriate solution to allow energy monitoring in such buildings. For example this would allow quantifying and understanding how the energy is spent throughout the building to better direct investment for energy-efficient solutions. The first step in order to reduce the energy consumption in a building is to measure how and where the energy is spent. As each building is unique, we need to define how data gathering on energy consumption can be obtained. This should clearly reflect how energy is spent in relation to how an infrastructure is being used:

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