Cloud, wireless technology, internet of things: the next generation of building automation systems?

Abstract

Building automation and control systems (BAS) have become a common part of non-residential buildings in the past decades. However, many automation systems rely on severely outdated technology that render it challenging, if not impossible, to implement recently developed, advanced building control approaches. By contrast, recent developments in cloud computing and wireless technology could support solutions to these challenges. However, many stakeholders require a suitable methodology to determine the potentials and the requirements of future, possibly next generation BAS. In this paper, we thus present and apply a method to answer the open questions and define minimum requirements. For that end, we investigate available communication technologies, protocols, and interfaces. Moreover, we present a simple test bench layout that could serve as a blueprint for future, more comprehensive test benches. It is a model a ventilation circuit consisting of a CO2 sensor for the supply air and an electronic damper. We turned these conventional components with analogue interfaces into IoT devices using a previously developed WiFi gateway. An exemplary test is the control of the CO2 concentration using a feedback controller implemented on an external machine. We aim to extend our initial prototype to a real-life building demonstration for dynamically scalable automation systems using wireless communication and develop our set-up into a platform enabling arbitrarily complex automation strategies and artificial intelligence applications.