Intelligent Building Automation System: A Layered Hardware and Software Architecture Approach

This paper proposes the hardware and software architecture approach to fulfill the requirements of smart and intelligent building automation in current trend of construction technology. This paper is concerned with monitoring and controlling of various modules used in the building automation system (BAS). BAS is attractive to facility manager and popular, because it helps in operational effectiveness of the building. Hence BAS must be optimized, well-designed, and well implemented. A measurement tool in the form of a performance index is used to improve the level of automation in a building. The aim of this paper is to describe the implementation of BAS using ARM controllers and wired and wireless nodes to develop building control application. Communication between main control station (server) and nodes (controllers, sensors, actuators) is established using wired channel (RS-485) and wireless channel (ZigBee). The device connected to RS-485 bus can communicate in half duplex mode with any other devices. The ZigBee is used for low cost, low power, and for short range communication. The security feature can be improved by using different access modes like developer and user mode. Therefore the above mentioned system (BAS) effectively monitors and controls different modules/nodes on single platform. The hardware and software architecture proposed plays vital role in implementation of BAS to address the quality issues like platform dependency, complexity, flexibility, security, power, etc.