Building automation systems (BAS)

No abstract

Abstract-The use of wireless technologies in automation systems offers attractive benefits, but introduces a number of new technological challenges. The paper discusses these aspects for home and building automation applications. Relevant standards are surveyed. A wireless extension to KNX/EIB based on tunnelling over IEEE 802.15.4 is presented. The design emulates the properties of the KNX/EIB wired medium via wireless communication, allowing a seamless extension. Furthermore, it is geared towards zero-configuration and supports the easy integration of protocol security.

Abstract-Web services are a key technology for enabling interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. They also lend themselves excellently to the integration of automation and IT systems. This paper discusses oBIX, a new standard for representing and accessing building automation (BA) data via Web services. It is shown how access to a BA system that follows the KNX protocol standard can be faithfully represented by way of oBIX entities. A prototype implementation of such a gateway is presented. The extensible nature of the oBIX data model is leveraged by using it to express the required KNX-oBIX mapping information as well. This approach allows a particularly clear and efficient gateway design.

The deployment of building automation systems (BAS) allows to increase comfort, safety and security and to reduce operational cost. Today such systems typically follow a two-layered hierarchical approach. While control networks interconnect distributed sensors, actuators and controllers, a backbone provides the necessary infrastructure for management tasks hosted by configuration and management devices. In addition, devices interconnecting the control network with the backbone and the backbone with further networks (e.g., the Internet) play a strategic role. All BAS devices contributing to a particular functionality differ in their requirements for hardware. This paper discusses requirements for devices used in the building automation domain and presents our work in progress to assemble platforms with different purposes relying on a modular architecture.