An IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee based wireless sensor network for Energy Efficient Buildings

Realizing energy efficient control strategies in the buildings is one of the innovative and challenging field of application for wireless sensor networks. To achieve the goal of reduced energy consumption and optimized use of energy in the buildings, the deployment of sensors and actuators is crucial. Simple affordable sensors can be used to monitor the power consumed by each appliance in the building in order to turn them on/off when it is efficient in the use of energy. The ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking project eDIANA (Embedded Systems for Energy Efficient Buildings) funded by the European Commission aims to improve energy efficiency in buildings by using embedded technologies. In the eDIANA platform the energy consumed by household or office appliances is monitored by using IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee-compliant devices. The aim of the study is to show the feasibility of the IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee technology to the eDIANA application scenario and to provide guidelines for the network design. For this purpose two studies have been carried out: (i) a simulation analysis of a large apartment where many nodes are deployed; (ii) a real test-bed composed of IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee-compliant devices. In the first case performance, in terms of packet error rate, average delay and energy consumption, is evaluated by varying the number of nodes in different traffic conditions. In the second case, instead, the statistics of the delay is provided. The study shows that simulation results are in line with the results achieved through the measurements. Moreover results fulfil the eDIANA requirements.