Design methods for wireless sensor network building energy monitoring systems

In this paper, we present a new energy analysis method for evaluating energy consumption of embedded sensor nodes at the application level and the network level. Then we apply the proposed energy analysis method to develop new energy management schemes in order to maximize lifetime for Wireless Sensor Network Building Energy Monitoring Systems (WSNBEMS). At the application level, we develop a new design approach that uses dataflow techniques to model the application-level interfacing behavior between the processor and sensors on an embedded sensor node. At the network level, we analyze the energy consumption of the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC functionality. Based on our techniques for modeling and energy analysis, we have implemented an optimized WSNBEMS for a real building, and validated our energy analysis techniques through measurements on this implementation. The performance of our implementation is also evaluated in terms of monitoring accuracy and energy consumption savings. We have demonstrated that by applying the proposed scheme, system lifetime can be improved significantly without affecting monitoring accuracy.