![](bg2.png)
be practical
Can be integrated into smart metering
frameworks (Kaplantis, 2012)
There are a number of commercially available
technologies primarily for home automation.
Hardware such as EnOcean, Z-wave, and KNX that
have been developed that can carry out energy
monitoring and actuation commands. Currently
these systems focus on the Home environment and
while they could be adapted as light weight BMS
solutions they are currently not optimised for such.
These solutions also tend to focus primarily on
electricity consumption of devices without offering
cost effective methods of monitoring gas
consumption (Anders, 2011). Industrial based
wireless hardware and protocols exist on the other
extreme such as WirelessHart. These systems again
are not optimised for the intermediate BMS solution
and are generally targeted towards very specific
industrial applications. Additionally since these
technologies tend towards proprietary technologies
they do not offer a complete retrofit solution (they
are not entirely future proof and if existing wireless
infrastructure exists such as a smart meter, they may
not be easily interoperable) A number of researchers
have looked at physical architectures and
deployments using Zigbee wireless networks (Yang,
2009; Jinsoo, 2009) for the areas of home
automation. These papers have focused primarily on
the design of the Zigbee mote and networks and do
not discuss in any great details deployments or
complete system requirements for a wireless BMS.
Other authors have looked at using 6Lowpan
enabled networks (Bernd and Thomas, 2011) and
have focused on the advantages 6Lowpan, such as
IPV6 compatibility and internet accessibility.
For a completely adaptable retrofit installation
that can act as a BMS alternative the system should
be broken into three distinct parts that are
completely interchangeable. These are
1. Hardware infrastructure
2. Middleware platform
3. Application
The deployment presented here has successfully
retrofitted a residence that is over one hundred years
old with a light weight BMS solution, utilizing low
cost wireless sensor nodes that are flexible and non-
invasive in their design enabling them to easily
integrate onto the existing utility framework at the
pilot site.
The deployment looked at all the components
required to create a lightweight BMS solution such
as the sensor motes, a middleware platform and web
based application that could interface through the
middleware to the deployed hardware acting as the
monitoring and intelligence of the BMS system.
The rest of this paper describes the set-up,
running and evaluation of a real world sensor
network deployment demonstrating device
interoperability and a non-invasive deployment that
provides data to a communications agnostic
middleware platform.
2 NETWORK OVERVIEW
The main objectives of the work carried out were to
Retrofit an existing building with a wireless
sensor enabled energy monitoring and
management system
Deploy wireless sensor motes in a real world
“living-lab” environment
Use a “self healing” mesh network to create a
robust network infrastructure
Utilize an IPV6 protocol for web interoperability
Integrate with the LinkSmart middleware
platform for network management
Report to a web based application for data
monitoring
2.1 Location
A suitable building was selected for deployment of
the wireless sensor network. The building selected
was the Crossleigh building located at University
College Cork (UCC) Figure 1. It is an old residential
building dating back to the middle of last century
that was adapted for use as offices and computer
laboratories for teaching staff and students in the
School of Applied Social Studies. The building’s
heating system is water based. There is a small
boiler house where a gas driven boiler heats the
water, which is then circulated in the building by a
set of pumps, also located in the boiler house. A gas
meter is located in a meter box in the front garden.
In this application the deployed system will control
the pump that serves the second floor, and use it to
regulate the temperature on that floor. The building
itself consists of three floors with the gas boiler
located in a separate extension on the back of the
house and the gas meter in a box out in front of the
building. This building was considered an ideal test
site as it represented both an old residential building
and small commercial enterprise.
WirelessNetworkDeploymentasLowCostBuildingManagementSystemSolution
65