Advanced Remote Control Infrastructure for Intelligent HEMS

Transcription

1 2011 International Conference on Information and Electronics Engineering IPCSIT vol.6 (2011) (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore Advanced Remote Control Infrastructure for Intelligent HEMS Shun-Yu Chan 1 Jen-Hao Teng 2+ Shang-Wen Luan 3 Rong-Ceng Leou 1 Jin-Liang Lin 3 1 Department of Electrical Engineering, Cheng-Shiu University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan 2 Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 3 Department of Electrical Engineering, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Abstract: This paper designs and implements an Advanced Remote Control Infrastructure (ARCI) for Intelligent Home Energy Management Systems (IHEMS). The deployment of the proposed ARCI is also discussed. ZigBee has been designed to possess general-purpose protocol with low cost, low power consumption and self networking; therefore, it is very suitable for constructing the communication network of IHEMS. The proposed ARCI are composed of data router module, appliance control module, ZigBee-to- IrDA control module, handheld control and management device, and rear-end SCADA system. All modules are equipped with a ZigBee-based communication interface. The ZigBee-to-IrDA control module is used to control the existing home appliances. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed ARCI and showed that the proposed ARCI has great potential to be integrated into IHEMS. Keywords: Advanced Remote Control Infrastructure, Intelligent Home Energy Management System, ZigBee, IrDA 1. Introduction Industries for intelligent building including safety monitoring, health care, convenience and comfort, and energy conservation are becoming the principal developing technologies supported by many governments. In the past, the first three topics gained the spotlights. However, energy conservation will dominate the future emphases of intelligent building due to the emerging issues on energy deficiency and carbon dioxide emission. An intelligent building with energy conservation techniques will essential to utilize the renewable energy like solar energy and wind power. For example, by installing photovoltaic panels above and around the building, the solar energy can be converted into electricity for daily usage. However, in addition to the utilization of renewable energy, the more positive effort should be made and initiated is energy management, which meters and collects energy consumption data and finds opportunities to save energy. Intelligent Home Energy Management System (IHEMS) integrates building automation system, security system, information system, and energy monitoring system along with environment sensors and artificial intelligence technology to accomplish the most effective control for energy consumption of equipments and appliances and for the optimal energy dispatch and management. It can be featured with not only avoiding inefficient energy consumption, but also coordinating the usage of the existed energy and renewable energy alternately [1-5]. How to construct the communication network and design the remote control infrastructure are the important issues for IHEMS. There are many kinds of wireless communication network standards, and ZigBee, a low-speed LR-WPAN (Low-Rate Wireless Area Personal Network) based on IEEE standard, is one of them. ZigBee has been designed to possess general-purpose protocol with low cost, low power consumption and self networking; therefore, it is very suitable for constructing the communication network of IHEMS. This paper designs and implements an Advanced Remote Control Infrastructure (ARCI) for IHEMS. The proposed ARCI are composed of data router module, appliance control module, ZigBee-to- IrDA control module, handheld control and management device, and rear-end SCADA system. All modules are equipped with a ZigBee-based communication interface. The ZigBee-to-IrDA control module is used to + Corresponding author: address: jhteng@ee.nsysu.edu.tw 45

2 control the existing home appliances. Those modules are developed based on the microcontroller unit of Microchip PIC18LF4620 and ZigBee chip of Microchip MRF24J40 [6-11]. Although ZigBee transmitting range can be up to 1200 m; the transmitting range will be greatly decreased while a clement compartmented wall or a plywood wall is located between ZigBee transceivers. Therefore, the deployment of proposed ARCI is also discussed in this paper. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed ARCI. 2. Basic Concepts of the Proposed ARCI Fig. 1 shows the architecture of the proposed ARCI which is composed of data router module, appliance control module, ZigBee-to-IrDA control module, handheld control and management device, and rear-end SCADA system. From Fig. 1, it can be seen that a handheld device such as smart phone or personal digital assistant embedded with the designed control, management and rear-end SCADA system is acted as the core of the proposed ARCI and is used to monitor and control home appliances. ZigBee-to-IrDA control module is designed to control the existing appliances which can only be controlled by IrDA. Appliance control module is used to monitor and control smart home appliances. Data router module is used to retransmit signals if the distance between appliance control module and handheld control and management device exceeds the ZigBee transmitting range. Fig. 1: Architecture of the Proposed ARCI ZigBee Alliance defines three device types for ZigBee network, ZigBee coordinator, ZigBee router and ZigBee end device. ZigBee coordinator and ZigBee router are Full Function Device (FFD), and ZigBee end device is Reduced Function Device (RFD). The FFD is capable of implementing the complete protocol set. The RFD is implemented using minimal resources and memory capacity and can only be used as end device. ZigBee coordinator is responsible for initiating and maintaining the devices on the network, and therefore, is integrated into handheld control and management device. ZigBee network supports star, tree and mesh topologies. In a star topology, the network is controlled by one ZigBee coordinator and other devices, known as end devices, directly communicate with the ZigBee coordinator. In mesh and tree topologies, the network can be extended through the use of ZigBee routers. This paper uses the tree topology; therefore, data router module is equipped with ZigBee router, and appliance control module and ZigBee-to-IrDA control module are equipped with ZigBee end devices. Although ZigBee transmitting range can be up to 1200 m; the transmitting range will be greatly decreased while a clement compartmented wall or a plywood wall is located between ZigBee transceivers. According to the experiments conducted in this paper, the transmitting ranges through a clement compartmented wall or a plywood wall are about 10 m and 48 m, respectively. If the required transmitting range exceeds the transmitting range of a single ZigBee transceiver, a data router module can be used to extend the transmitting range. Fig. 2 shows the deployment recommendation of the proposed ARCI for a townhouse. Of course, the data router module can be excluded for a small-sized apartment. The maximum nodes for a ZigBee network are 65536; therefore, the proposed system can also be extended to industrial automation. 46

3 3. Hardware and Firmware Designs The proposed modules as shown in Fig. 1 are developed based on the microcontroller unit of Microchip PIC18LF4620 and ZigBee chip of Microchip MRF24J40. Figs. 3(a)-(d) show the hardware architectures for data router module, appliance control module ZigBee-to-IrDA control module, and handheld control and management device, respectively. From Fig. 3, it can be seen that ZigBee RF transceiver and microcontroller unit are the foundation for each module; however, note that data router module is equipped with ZigBee router, and appliance control module and ZigBee-to-IrDA control module are equipped with ZigBee end devices. Microcontroller unit with designed firmware is used to control and manage the module. In order to achieve more flexible control, appliance control module is equipped with a plug-in control memory card, that control commands can be stored, and then the I/O pins can be controlled by the commands loaded and executed by the microcontroller unit. The hardware architectures of other modules are designed based on the similar idea. Fig. 2: Deployment Recommendation of the Proposed ARCI (a) Data Router Module (b) Appliance Control Module (c) ZigBee-to-IrDA Control Module (d) Handheld Control and Management Device Fig. 3: Modules of the Proposed Infrastructure Firmware designed in each module is used to manage the communication network and control home appliances if required. Fig. 4 (a) shows the firmware flowchart of ZigBee device management. From Fig. 4(a), it can be seen that the initial condition of the device is in the sleep and energy saving mode. If a signal is needed to be transmitted or received, external interrupts are trigged and the device wakes up to transmit or receive the signal. Fig. 4(b) shows the block diagrams of the rear-end SCADA system. Control and display HMI block is designed to communicate with microcontroller unit through USB, RS232 or Blue Booth and then constructed the ZigBee network for the proposed ARCI. It can also be used to control appliances and display returned data. Database block is designed to store the control commands and access codes for appliances and record the returned data and abnormal events of appliances etc. Appliance control block is used to identify the appliances required to control, load the necessary control commands from database and then those commands will be delivered to control and display HMI block. Due to limited space, the detailed design contents and firmware flowchart of each module are not shown here. 47

4 4. Experimental Results The smart home appliances are still not popular due to the standard uncertainties; therefore, some existing home appliances are used to verify the proposed ARCI. Fig. 5(a) shows the hardware prototype of ZigBee-to-IrDA control module. Fig. 5(b) shows a binary code received by the IrDA transceiver of existing home appliance which is transmitted by the handheld device and received by ZigBee transceiver and retransmitted by IrDA transceiver of ZigBee-to-IrDA control module. Note that according to IrDA protocol the carrier wave frequency is 38 khz and logic 1 and logic 0 are 2.25 ms composed of 560 μ s PWM and 1690 μ s space, and 1.12 ms composed of 560 μ s PWM and 560 μ s space, respectively. From Fig. 5(b), it can be seen that the capability of ZigBee-to-IrDA control module can be confirmed. (a) Firmware Flowchart of ZigBee Device Management (b) Block Diagrams of the Rear-end SCADA System Fig. 4: Firmware Design for the Proposed ARCI (a) Hardware Prototype Fig. 5: ZigBee-to-IrDA Control Module (b) IrDA Code Table 1: Part of IrDA Control Codes for Air-Conditioner Manufactured by Hitachi On/Off 0x4D, 0x75, 0xB2, 0x8A,0x0F,0x26,0x27,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x08,0x19 Temperature Adjustment (C) x4D, 0x75, 0xB2, 0x8A,0x0F,0x16,0x27,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x x4D, 0x75, 0xB2, 0x8A,0x0F,0x16,0x29,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x x4D, 0x75, 0xB2, 0x8A,0x0F,0x26,0x2B,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x15 Fan Speed (H: High, M: Medium, L: Low) x4D, 0x75, 0xB2, 0x8A,0x0F,0x26,0x2B,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x x4D, 0x75, 0xB2, 0x8A,0x0F,0x16,0x2B,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x x4D, 0x75, 0xB2, 0x8A,0x0F,0x46,0x2B,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x17 In the following experiments, the air conditioners manufactured by Hitachi are used. Table 1 shows part of the IrDA control codes for Hitachi s air conditioner. In order to make sure that the proposed ARCI can control the air conditioners effectively, ZigBee network analyzer named ZENA designed by Microchip is used. Many experiments are conducted; however, only some cases are shown. The short addresses of the handheld device equipped with a ZigBee coordinator and the ZigBee-to-IrDA control module equipped with a ZigBee end device are 0x0000 and 0x796, respectively. ZigBee-to-IrDA control module can control several existing home appliances and the appliances are numbered from nodes 0x00 to 0x16. Fig. 6 shows the data frames received by ZigBee-to-IrDA control module and analyzed by ZENA to turn on the air 48

5 condition (node 0x16), adjust the temperature form 25 C to 26 C, and change fan speed from high to medium. From Fig. 5 and Table 1, it can be seen that AF data (control codes) are the same as the control codes shown in Table 1; therefore, the validity of proposed ARCI can be demonstrated. 5. Conclusions Fig. 6: Data Frames by ZigBee-to-IrDA Control Module This paper designed and implemented an ARCI for IHEMS. The deployment of the proposed system was also discussed. The proposed ARCI are composed of data router module, appliance control module, ZigBeeto-IrDA control module, handheld control and management device, and rear-end SCADA system. The ZigBee-to-IrDA control module is used to control the existing home appliances. Experimental results demonstrated the validity of the proposed system and showed that the proposed system has great potential to be integrated into IHEMS. This paper only focused on the hardware implementation and firmware design of the proposed ARCI, the utilization of the proposed ARCI to achieve optimal energy dispatch and management for IHEMS will be discussed in the future research. 6. Acknowledgements This work was sponsored by National Science Council, Taiwan, under research grant NSC E References [1] Sundramoorthy, V.; Cooper, G.; Linge, N.; Qi Liu; Domesticating Energy-Monitoring Systems: Challenges and Design Concerns, IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 10, Issue 1, 2011, pp [2] Paradiso, Joseph; Dutta, Prabal; Gellersen, Hans; Schooler, Eve; Introduction: Smart Energy Systems, IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 10, Issue 1, 2011, pp [3] Dae-Man Han; Jae-Hyun Lim; Design and implementation of smart home energy management systems based on ZigBee, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 56, Issue 3, 2010, pp [4] Xiaohong Guan; Zhanbo Xu; Qing-Shan Jia; Energy-Efficient Buildings Facilitated by Microgrid, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 2010, pp [5] Young-Sung Son; Pulkkinen, T.; Kyeong-Deok Moon; Chaekyu Kim; Home energy management system based on power line communication, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 56, Issue 3, 2010, pp [6] Shang-Wen Luan, Jen-Hao Teng, Shun-Yu Chan, Lain-Chyr Hwang, Development of a Smart Power Meter for AMI Based on ZigBee Communication, IEEE 8-th International Conference on Power Electronics and Driver Systems, Taiwan, pp , 2009 [7] Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPANs), IEEE , New York, October [8] ZigBee Specification, ZigBee Alliance, ZigBee Document r17, January [9] PIC18F2525/2620/4525/4620 Data Sheet Microchip Technology Inc., [10] MRF24J40MB Data Sheet Microchip Technology Inc., [11] ZENA Wireless Network Analyzer User s Guide Microchip Technology Inc.,