REST assured, we manage your microgrid

A Site Management System (SMS), controlling and coordinating domestic, commercial and industrial sites has an inherently dynamic computer network. Devices can enter and leave the network at any moment because of malfunctions, mobility or new components. Moreover, the size of the network continuously increases, thanks to adding networking capabilities to new ranges of appliances, from electrical plugs to PV panels. In these environments the burden of administration quickly exceeds any potential benefit if the devices require explicit configuration to work together. Furthermore, embedded systems used in these scenarios have severe requirements in terms of costs and size, offering limited resources to applications running on them. This paper presents a SMS platform based on IPv6 protocols and RESTful web services that requires no human intervention for the configuration and simplifies the addition of new nodes. The platform uses inexpensive devices with low power consumption and constrained resources. It lets SMSs discover and interact with new devices automatically, by leveraging efficient protocols like mDNS/DNS-SD and the IETF Constrained Application Protocol. From the communication perspective, the platform offers robustness and versatility. The use of an extended version of the RPL routing protocol, specifically tailored for sensor networks, permits to combine on the same device more than one communication technology, i.e. IEEE 802.15.4 and Ethernet. Thus, the platform can be applied in a large variety of settings where an adaptive and reliable communication infrastructure is needed. To evaluate its performance, the platform has been integrated in a real SMS.