Hybrid Device Interoperability in Intelligent Building Systems

Intelligent Building Management Systems (BMSs) are more widely used in various buildings that are extending beyond usual networks, including any imaginable electronic device. There are many BMSs, each one having their own architecture using different protocols, standards and working on various communication interfaces like cable, power line or radio frequency. There are many devices that are communication enabled but due to lack of a unifying standard interoperability between devices is impossible. Founded by this observation the basic idea of this paper is to propose a solution for this problem by using Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology to design a hybrid (wired/wireless) gateway platform. A test system had been developed to test gateway communication with some wireless sensors. This solution could bring a higher level of flexibility to BMSs and therefore, various devices working on future standards and protocols would be easily integrated into current BMSs without major modifications.