DEVS-IoT: performance evaluation of smart home devices network

Abstract

Advances in electronics and connectivity have enabled a wide range of applications that can harness data collection for better decision making and an improved lifestyle. The Internet of Things (IoT) provides the communication infrastructure that allows devices with sensing and control capabilities to be connected within a home network. Smart home systems are considered one of the prominent applications in IoT, where it is possible to control home devices to achieve a better usage in terms of cost and comfort. However, smart home networks contain a wide range of devices and finding an optimal schedule for their working hours is an NP-hard problem. Hence, rather than using mathematical optimization to find optimal solutions, this paper proposes a modeling and simulation methods in order to provide good decisions and recommendations for devices’ scheduling. Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) formalism is used to develop a model of a smart home network. The devices are categorized into two groups: monitoring devices and control devices. Monitoring devices include sensors that capture climate, energy, power, performance, and occupant’s behavioral data. Control devices send signals remotely for setting and controlling different devices in the smart home network. The behavior in terms of power usage and cost is simulated under different scenarios and settings. The simulation results show that less energy consumption can be achieved if users adopt a behavior where the schedule of three devices is changed every week. As a result, the proposed method can be utilized to make better decisions in setting devices parameters and evaluating the performance of the smart devices network under different conditions, scenarios, and settings.