Cost effective and scalable sensor network for intelligent building monitoring

Conventional sensor networks for building monitoring lack smart means to exploit collected environmental data to support relevant knowledge generation. Explicit domain knowledge plays the key role for software units to execute relevant tasks autonomously, which in turn can ease the increasing complexity embedded in the contemporary building management process. In many cases, the cost of multi-functional sensor networks is still high and the sensor system deployment still requires special expertise, which hinders their wider adoption for the existing or new buildings. This paper presents a cost-effective hardware design for multi-functional ZigBee sensor unit, which compactly integrates several different types of sensors. Together with a supporting multiagent software framework, the application described herein can provide real time and smart building monitoring through querying the modelled domain knowledge. The contribution of the developed sensor network lies in its compact assembly, easy deployment, and the intelligence provided by elaborating the explicit building domain knowledge through the use of autonomous software agents. The ongoing testing shows a promising building monitoring network with the original intentions to identify wasted energy consumption in buildings, and further suggest better usage of building spaces.