Generic sensor network for building monitoring: design, issues, and methodology

Abstract

In recent years, sensor networks have attracted great interests and have brought solutions in several areas. They can be used in natural disaster management, intrusion detection, pollution control, medical surveillance, etc. This article describes our experiments in development, deployment and data exploitation of sensor network. This network aims to study pollution and increase energy efficiency of several systems located in buildings. We developed and deployed the sensor network in buildings of our school. The network consists of generic and modular sensors. The sensors collect several data such as temperature, humidity, ambient light, carbon monoxide, etc. Subsequently, these data are transmitted to a base station. By using a human machine interface, these data can be visualized and processed in real time. During and after the development and implementation of this network, we identified issues related to energy constraints, network scale, increased complexity, physical environment, and financial and temporal costs. To solve these issues, we propose to explore new development methods based on model driven approach that reduce costs and efforts and ensure consistency.