Wi-design, Wi-manage, why bother?

Wireless senor networks (WSNs) for building automation are a low cost solution in terms of installation and retrofit. WSN provide building operators with the opportunity to monitor and control building performance to improve efficiency by becoming more energy usage aware and demand responsive. However, the penetration of wireless sensing technology has been hampered by concerns regarding the reliability and manageability of wireless systems in harsh operating environments. The traditional solutions to address WSN reliability and manageability are to employ high levels of node redundancy and to embed self-management functions within communications protocols themselves. However the disadvantages of this approach are cost and non-optimum behaviour in large scale systems. The main motivation for a building operator to deploy a WSN is cost reduction and hence the costly requirement for high levels of node redundancy is unlikely to provide a satisfactory solution. WSNs deployed for building monitoring, unlike a typical communications network, is part of a broader building management business designed to curtail operational overheads for an enterprise. For buildings the physical deployment of a building management system is likely to be a once off roll out. However, the internal layout of the building is often dynamic as the traditional role of building owner/user has shifted and it is common practice now for several companies to lease space within the one building. With a once off BMS deployment the installation and use of the network tended to be completely independent activities. It is now well accepted that a continuous commissioning approach to building operation is needed to maintain optimum building performance. We argue that this also needs to extend to the wireless sensing infrastructure, creating demand for a continuous wireless infrastructure (Wi) design, deployment and reconfiguration lifecycle process that optimises the wireless infrastructure aspects of the BMS. We propose Wi* an innovative solution for the design and management of wireless sensing infrastructure capable of interfacing with the BMS to provide an integrated technology platform for fine grained building automation.