Wireless sensor network deployment for building environmental monitoring and control

It is commonly agreed that a 15-40% reduction of building energy consumption is achievable by efficiently operated buildings when compared with typical practice. Existing research has identified that the level of information available to Building Managers with existing Building Management Systems and Environmental Monitoring Systems (BMS/EMS) is insufficient to perform the required performance based building assessment. The majority of today's buildings are insufficiently sensored to obtain an unambiguous understanding of performance. The cost of installing additional sensors and meters is extremely high, primarily due to the estimated cost of wiring and the needed labor. From this perspectives wireless sensors technology proves to have a greater cost-efficiency while maintaining high levels of functionality and reliability. In this paper, a wireless sensor network mote hardware design and implementation are introduced for building deployment application. The core of the mote design is based on the 8 bit AVR microcontroller, Atmega1281 and 2.4 GHz wireless communication chip, CC2420. The sensors were selected carefully to meet both the building monitoring and design requirements. Beside the sensing capability, actuation and interfacing to external meters/sensors are provided to perform different management control and data recording tasks. The experiments show that the developed mote works effectively in giving stable data acquisition and owns good communication and power performance.