Commercial and Intelligent Building Systems

The Commercial and Intelligent Building Systems market vertical includes the following types of buildings: office, retail, educational, healthcare, and hospitality ranging in size from small shops/offices to the largest towers.
Services covered may include lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), access control, security, video surveillance, fire alarm and sprinklers, elevator control, audio, and others.

IoT Elements

Physical

Microchips
Sensing
Communications

Antenna
Frequency
Message Data Interface (MDI)
Transceiver
System

Coding & Security
Command Sets
Messages
Data Storage & Analysis
User Interface
Applications

Communication Technologies

Wired and wireless local area and personal area networks:

  • Wired
    • ANSI C82.11 0-10 V dimming
      A standard for high-frequency lighting ballasts that have rated open-circuit voltages of 2,000 volts or less and are intended to operate at a supply frequency of 50 or 60 Hz.
    • ASHRAE 135 (BACnet)
      BACnet, the ASHRAE building automation and control networking protocol, was designed to meet the communication needs of building automation and control systems.
    • Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI)
      A protocol that enables easy and intelligent management of lighting equipment.
    • Ethernet and Power over Ethernet
      Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN).
      Power over Ethernet or PoE describes any of several standardized or ad-hoc systems which pass electric power along with data on twisted pair Ethernet cabling.
    • Proprietary/Vendor-specific
  • Wireless
    • Bluetooth
      A wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, and building  personal area networks.
    • EnOcean
      EnOcean provides reliable and self-powered wireless sensor solutions for the Internet of Things.
    • IEEE 802.15.4
      A technical standard which defines the operation of low-rate wireless personal area networks. It serves as the basis for the Zigbee and Thread specifications
    • Proprietary/Vendor-specific
    • Thread
      Thread is a smart home/building networking protocol based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard
    • WiFi
      A technology for wireless local area networking with devices based on the IEEE 802.11 standards
    • Zigbee
      An IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios.
  • Optical

Attributes

Lighting Demand Response
Device Density High; for example, one per office occupant for task lighting; two or more per luminaire for sensing light and occupancy and for dimming the luminaire Low/Medium
Number of Devices High Low/Medium
Quality of Service (QOS) Medium/High

While bandwidth needs for connected lighting systems are low/medium, low latency and high network uptime are essential.

 High

Network performance is important to enable demand response and to ensure buildings avoid penalties for improper execution of demand response signals
Latency Low; Low latency for lighting systems is important so that light sources respond as quickly as possible to user input Medium/High
Topology Linear, Star, or Mesh topology on one floor or part of a floor, joined to a backbone running the height of the building
Power Line Power, DALI Bus, Battery, Direct Current, Power over Ethernet, In-Device Energy Harvesting

Increased transmit power in wireless systems can improve penetration thru building materials, particularly metallic ones, and increase range and/or reliability of communications
Range Typical wireless personal area networks (WPANs) have a range between nodes of 10 to 30 meters. If nodes are meshed so data can hop from one to another, range can be multiplied by the number of hops allowed

 

System Protocols

  • BACnet
    A widely-used data communication protocol for building automation and control networks
  • Ethernet (LAN, WiFi) 802.11 WLAN
  • Personal and Small area Networks
    • Bluetooth, BLE (IEEE 802.15.1)
      A wireless personal area network technology designed and marketed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group intended to provide considerably reduced power consumption while maintaining a similar communication range as Bluetooth.
    • Mesh 802.15.4
      A technical standard which defines the operation of low-rate wireless personal area networks.
    • Zigbee
      An IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios.
  • Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
    An Internet-standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior

Applications

Services covered may include lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), access control, security, video surveillance, fire alarm and sprinklers, elevator control, audio, and others

Target Market

Types of buildings include:

  • Educational
  • Healthcare
  • Hospitality
  • Office
  • Retail

These range in size from small shops/offices to the largest towers.

Relevant Standards

  • ANSI C82.11
    A standard for high-frequency lighting ballasts that have rated open-circuit voltages of 2,000 volts or less and are intended to operate at a supply frequency of 50 or 60 Hz.
  • ASHRAE 135
    BACnet, the ASHRAE building automation and control networking protocol, was designed to meet the communication needs of building automation and control systems.
  • Bluetooth 4.1
    A low energy implementation of the Bluetooth specification
  • IEC 62386 Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI)
    A protocol that enables easy and intelligent management of lighting equipment.
  • IEEE 802.3 Ethernet
    A collection of IEEE standards defining the physical layer and data link layer’s media access control (MAC) of wired Ethernet.
  • IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks
    A set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer communication in the 900 MHz and 2.4, 3.6, 5, and 60 GHz frequency bands.
  • IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Personal Area Networks
    A technical standard which defines the operation of low-rate wireless personal area networks. It serves as the basis for the Zigbee and Thread specifications
  • IEEE 802.15.7 Visible Light Communication
    A standard for the use of visible light for secure data transmission.
  • Thread 1.1
    Thread is a smart home/building networking protocol based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard
  • Zigbee 3.0
    A Zigbee standard that unifies all of its wireless standards.