An Occupancy Based Cyber-Physical System Design for Intelligent Building Automation

Cyber-physical system (CPS) includes the class of Intelligent Building Automation System (IBAS) which increasingly utilizes advanced technologies for long term stability, economy, longevity, and user comfort. However, there are diverse issues associated with wireless interconnection of the sensors, controllers, and power consuming physical end devices. In this paper, a novel architecture of CPS for wireless networked IBAS with priority-based access mechanism is proposed for zones in a large building with dynamically varying occupancy. Priority status of zones based on occupancy is determined using fuzzy inference engine. Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) is used to solve the optimization problem involving conflicting demands of minimizing total energy consumption and maximizing occupant comfort levels in building. An algorithm is proposed for power scheduling in sensor nodes to reduce their energy consumption. Wi-Fi with Elimination-Yield Nonpreemptive Multiple Access (EY-NPMA) scheme is used for assigning priority among nodes for wireless channel access. Controller design techniques are also proposed for ensuring the stability of the closed loop control of IBAS in the presence of packet dropouts due to unreliable network links

Occupancy Patterns Scoping Review Project

Understanding the occupancy and heating patterns of UK domestic consumers is important for understanding the role of demand-side technologies, such as occupancy-based smart heating controls to manage energy consumption more efficiently.The research undertakes a systematic scoping review to identify and assess the quality of the UK and international evidence on occupancy patterns, to critically review the common methods of measuring occupancy, and to discuss the potential role of occupancy-based smart heating controls in meeting energy savings, thermal comfort and usability requirements.This report was prepared by a team at the University of Southampton and commissioned by the former Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).<br/