Secure service discovery in building automation and control systems

Building Automation and Control Systems (BACS) are intelligent networks of distributed sensors and actuators, which enable monitoring and control of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, and safety systems deployed in commercial buildings. These sensors and actuators can be seen as resources of the corresponding nodes interacting with each other, and with users providing various device services. For easy commissioning and cost-effective operation of BACS, service discovery operations are essential. BACS is very critical part of a building infrastructure requiring that device and services are accessed and controlled in a secure way. Consequently, security and access control must be incorporated as integral part of the methods for service discovery in BACS. Furthermore, any security solution needs to take into account the domain specific requirements such as constraints on computation power, limited memory of nodes, and communication bandwidth, among others. The objective of this thesis is to identify design requirements of a secure service discovery protocol in BACS. Further based on these requirements, a design solution is presented and analyzed based on the constraints of the system. Functionality of the proposed design is implemented as a proof-ofconcept and the system is evaluated.