A control and decision system for smart buildings using wireless sensor and actuator networks

A research field that makes use of information and communication technologies to provide solutions to contemporaneous environmental challenges such as greenhouse gas emissions and global warming is the smart building' field. The use of wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs) emerges as an alternative for the use of information and communication technologies in the smart buildings. However, most of smart building applications make use of centralised architectures with sensing nodes transmitting messages to a base station wherein, effectively, the control and decision processes happen. In this context, we present CONDE, a decentralised CONtrol and DEcision-making system for smart building applications using WSANs. CONDE main contributions are as follows: (i) the decentralisation of the control and decision-making processes among WSAN nodes, saving energy of both the WSAN and the building; (ii) the integration of applications through sharing the sensed data and chaining decisions between applications within the WSAN, also saving energy of both the WSAN and the building; and (iii) the provision of a consensual multilevel decision that takes into account the cooperation among nodes to have a broader view of the monitored building. Performed experiments have shown CONDE gains in terms of the following: (i) response time; (ii) system efficiency; and (iii) energy savings from the network and the building. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.