Pervasive Computing Based Intelligent Energy Conservation System

Int. J. Advanced Networking and Applications
Volume: 07 Issue: 03 Pages: 2736-2740 (2015) ISSN: 0975-0290
2736
Pervasive Computing Based Intelligent Energy
Conservation System
Dr. A.Kanagaraj
PG Department of Computer Science, Nehru Arts and Science College, Coimbatore-641105.
Email: a.kanagaraj@gmail.com
Ms S.Sharmila
Department of Computer Science, NGM College, Pollachi, Coimbatore-642001.
Email: mcasharmi2007@gmail.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT-----------------------------------------------------------
Most of the HVAC system in home is running based on static control algorithm; based on fixed work schedules. In
that old system energy became waste when home contains low or no people occupancy. In this paper we presented
new dynamic approach of HVAC system control, by combined with pervasive computing. Pervasive computing
can be defined as availability of centralized system and information anywhere and anytime. We achieved our
target by using occupancy sensors for collecting home status. Initially our occupancy sensors collect human
presence and current HVAC status details and stored in centralized system. Then based on our user defined
threshold value the centralized system maintains the building's heating, cooling and air quality conditions by
controlling HVAC devices. I.e. this system turned off HVAC systems when a home is unoccupied, or put the
system into an energy saving sleep mode when persons are asleep.
Keywords - HVAC, Pervasive Computing, Humidity Management, Occupancy Sensor, Ventilation Management.
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Date of Submission: Oct 14, 2015 Date of Acceptance: Nov 13, 2015
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1. Introduction
The development of low-cost and easy-to-deploy sensing
systems to support activity detection in the home has been
an important trend in the pervasive computing community
[1, 7]. Much of this research has centered on the
deployment of a network of inexpensive sensors
throughout the home, such as motion detectors or simple
contact switches. Although these solutions are cost-
effective on an individual sensor basis, they are not
without some important drawbacks that limit their
desirability as research tools as well as their likelihood of
eventual commercial success through broad consumer
acceptance [8].
We have developed an approach that provides a whole-
house solution for detecting gross movement and room
transitions through occupancy sensor by sensing
differential air pressure at a single point in the home. Our
solution leverages the central heating, ventilation, and air
conditioning (HVAC) systems found in many homes. The
home forms a closed circuit for air circulation, where the
HVAC system provides a centralized airflow source and
therefore a convenient single monitoring point for the
whole airflow circuit.
Disruptions in home airflow caused by human movement
through the house, especially those caused by the blockage
of doorways and thresholds, results in static pressure
changes in the HVAC air handler unit when the HVAC is
operating. Our system detects and records this pressure
variation from differential sensors mounted on the air filter
and classifies where exactly certain movement events are
occurring in the house, such as an adult walking through a
particular doorway or the opening and closing of a door.
Preliminary results show we can classify unique transition
events with up to 75-80% accuracy. We also show how we
detect movement events when the HVAC is not operating
using occupancy sensor.
The principal advantage of this approach, when compared
to installing motion sensors throughout an entire house
space, is that it requires the installation of only a single
sensing unit that connects to a computer. By observing the
opening and closing of doors and the movement of people
transitioning from room to room, the location and activity
of people in the space can later be inferred. In addition,
detecting a series of room transitions can be used for
simple occupancy detection or to estimate a person’s path
in the house to regulate the HVAC system to consume
more energy.
Because of the use of a single monitoring point on an
existing home infrastructure (the HVAC air handler, in
this example) to detect human activity throughout an
entire house, we consider our system a member of an
important new class of activity monitoring systems that we
call infrastructure mediated sensing. In the remainder of
this paper, we further define this new category of sensing
and solutions to solve this limitation by implementing
occupancy sensors are discussed.
2. Literature Review
Shwetak N. Patel, Matthew S. Reynolds et al. [15], We
have developed an approach for whole-house gross

2737
movement and room transition detection through sensing
at only one point in the home. This system considers to be
one member of an important new class of human activity
monitoring approaches based on what we call
infrastructure mediated sensing, or "home bus snooping."
This system provides solution which leverages the existing
ductwork infrastructure of central heating, ventilation, and
air conditioning (HVAC) systems found in many homes.
Disruptions in airflow, caused by human inter-room
movement, result in static pressure changes in the HVAC
air handler unit. This is particularly apparent for room-to-
room transitions and door open/close events involving full
or partial blockage of doorways and thresholds.
The system detects and records this pressure variation
from sensors mounted on the air filter and classify where
certain movement events are occurring in the house, such
as an adult walking through a particular doorway or the
opening and closing of a particular door. In contrast to
more complex distributed sensing approaches for motion
detection in the home, this method requires the installation
of only a single sensing unit (i.e., an instrumented air
filter) connected to an embedded or personal computer
that performs the classification function. A preliminary
result shows the system can able to classify unique
transition events with up to 75-80% accuracy.
Tamim Sookoor, Brian Holben et al. [16], demonstrated in
their paper, how to use cheap, off-the-shelf sensors and
actuators to retrofit a centralized HVAC system and
enable rooms to be heated or cooled individually, in order
to reduce waste caused by conditioning unoccupied rooms.
They named this approach as room-level zoning.
Vic Callaghan, Graham Clarke et al. [17], in their paper
they seeks to use their experience as computer scientists to
advance debates by considering issues arising from their
research related to intelligent buildings and environments,
such as the deployment of autonomous intelligent agents.
K.F. Fong a, V.I. [5], presented the robust evolutionary
algorithm (REA) to tackle the nature of HVAC simulation
models. REA is based on one of the paradigms of
evolutionary algorithm, evolution strategy, which is a
stochastic population based searching technique
emphasized on mutation. The REA, which incorporates
the Cauchy deterministic mutation, tournament selection
and arithmetic recombination, would provide a synergetic
effect for optimal search. The REA is effective to cope
with the complex simulation models, as well as those
represented by explicit mathematical expressions of
HVAC engineering optimization problems [18].
3. Limitations of HVAC
HVAC here stands for Heating, Ventilation and Air
Conditioning. Thus, a HVAC control system applies
regulation to a heating and/or air conditioning system [19].
Usually a sensing device is used to compare the actual
state (e.g., temperature) with a target state. Then the
control system draws a conclusion what action has to be
taken (e.g., start/stop the blower).
To implement temperature limits and a variety of control
strategies based on the available control system
technologies currently in place in home facilities, in order
to reduce the consumption of energy [3, 4]. This plan shall
include, but not be limited to temperature comfort ranges
(limits), building schedule controls (occupied versus
unoccupied), various control strategies and system
upgrades and standardization of full DDC systems with
occupancy sensors for all future facilities and renovations.
The current system regulates the HVAC system based on
static control algorithm. Where as in the paper we
introduced dynamic system, so that we can consume more
energy compare to static system.
4. Pervasive Computing
Pervasive computing envisions a world with users
interacting naturally with device-rich environments to
perform various kinds of tasks. These environments must,
thus, be self-managing and autonomic systems, receiving
only high-level guidance from users. However, these
environments are also highly dynamic - the context and
resources available in these environments can change
rapidly. They are also prone to failures - one or more
entities can fail due to a variety of reasons. The dynamic
and fault-prone nature of these environments poses major
challenges to their autonomic operation.
Pervasive computing advocates the construction of large
distributed systems that feature a number of devices and
services [12]. These devices and services are meant to help
users perform various tasks more easily and efficiently.
Besides, these devices are supposed to disappear into the
surroundings and not intrude on the user's consciousness.
This requires pervasive computing environments to be
self-managing and autonomic, requiring minimal user
intervention. At the same time, these environments are
also highly dynamic and fault-prone. New kinds of entities
can enter these environments at any time. Existing entities
may fail or leave the environment. The context of these
environments can also change.
Pervasive computing aims at availability and invisibility
[14]. On the one hand, pervasive computing can be
defined as availability of software applications and
information anywhere and anytime. On the other hand,
pervasive computing also means that computers are hidden
in numerous so-called information appliances that we use
in our day-to-day lives. Personal digital assistants (PDAs)
and cell phones are the first widely available and used
pervasive computing devices.
Several pervasive computing devices and users are
wireless and mobile. Devices and applications are
continuously running and always available. From an
architectural point of view, applications are non-
monolithic, but rather made of collaborating parts spread

2738
over the network nodes [9, 13]. Pervasive computing is
characterized by a high degree of heterogeneity: devices
and distributed components are from different vendors and
sources. Support of mobility and distribution in such a
context requires open distributed computing architectures
and open protocols.
The intelligent system uses occupancy sensors to
automatically turn off the HVAC system when the
occupants are sleeping or away from home. The intelligent
system uses these sensors to infer when occupants are
away, active, or sleeping and turns the HVAC system off
as much as possible without sacrificing occupant comfort
[6, 10].
The first main challenge of this approach is to quickly and
reliably determine when occupants leave the home or go to
sleep. Motion sensors are notoriously poor occupancy
sensors and have long been a source of frustration for
users of occupancy-based lighting systems, which often
turn the lights off when a room is still occupied. For the
intelligent system, these mistakes would lead to more than
just user frustration: frequently turning off and on the
HVAC system can cause uncomfortable temperature
swings, shorten the lifetime of the equipment, and even
cause energy waste due to frequent equipment cycling.
Furthermore, a longer time-out period is not an adequate
solution because it would waste energy by conditioning
unoccupied spaces; the intelligent system requires
occupancy monitoring that is both quick and reliable. To
address this problem, we use occupancy sensors to detect
human presence in home, and based on that our intelligent
system quickly recognize leave and sleep events,
dynamically allowing the system to respond without
increasing false detection rates.
The second main challenge of this approach is to decide
when to turn the HVAC system back on. Preheating the
house could waste energy if the system is activated too
early. On the other hand, heating only in response to
occupant arrival could also waste energy because, at that
point, the house must be heated very quickly; many multi-
stage HVAC systems have a highly efficient heat pump
that can be used for slowly preheating, but a lower
efficiency furnace or electric heating coils must be used to
heat the house quickly. Since the intelligent system uses
static control algorithm, it cannot predict exactly when
occupants will arrive, it is difficult to decide which
approach will be more efficient on any given day. Instead,
the system uses a hybrid approach which uses occupancy
sensors that minimizes the long-term expected energy
usage based on the occupancy patterns of the house [11].
The collected parameters including people number, light
luminance, temperature. CO2, power used, and humidity
which would influence the dynamic running of the system,
and the collected parameters would be sent to centralized
system decide the feedback control parameters. The
sensors of temperature, CO2, luminance, humidity, power
used in this energy-saving system were design with
modules to meet with different situations of power
consumption such as power system, lights luminance, air
conditioning, official affairs machines and facilities, and
the information stream was used large number of
technology of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) so as to
construct an active & intelligent energy-saving system [2].
5. Infrastructure
Occupancy sensors play a significant role in the
performance of the intelligent system. We deploy X10
motion sensors and door sensors in 4 homes to collect
occupancy and sleep information. These homes include
both single-person and multi-person residences, and the
people living in the home include students, professionals
and homemakers. For example, one home includes a
graduate student couple along with an elderly resident, two
other homes include young working professionals, and
another home includes three graduate students. The
duration of the sensor deployments varies from one to two
weeks. In general, we deploy one occupancy sensor in
each room and one motion sensor on each entryway to the
home, and some inner doors. However, we do not
instrument rooms or entryways that are very infrequently
used. This system analyzes the leave, return, wake, and
sleep times from two publicly-available data sets that
contain home occupancy information. These data sets are
collected by manually labeling activities such as sleeping,
eating, and bathing, and leaving home.
6. An Automated System Design & its
Operations
Relationship between collected parameters in space and
energy-saving system was described as follow:
6.1 Humidity Management
The various WSN sensor modules with ZigBee data
transmission interface for sensing temperature and number
of people are well-designed. Those environmental
parameters would be detected and sent to the server
computer as judged factors to be determined whether the
system should proceed feedback control based on the
proposed intelligent system. These WSN modules are
placed at proper location to match up the condition of
environment.
6.2 Ventilation Management
We would first calculate the area of a space and decide the
maximum number of people, after then we detected the
real people number and the luminance parameters and sent
back to centralized system to feedback control how many
lights in the space should be turn off and the luminance
still meet with the regular luminance 550Lux, the decisive
procedure could be in two ways, one is calculated the
factor which was maximum entered people divided by
entered people, and used this factor to multiply the total
lights number, so we got the desired turned on lights, and

2739
then we used the detected light luminance to decide
whether the luminance was enough or not, and then
feedback control the lights according the judge of
intelligent agent system built in centralized system. We
could directly and dynamically decide the lights turned on
or off according to the luminance sensor signals.
6.3 Air-Conditioning Management
The CO2 density would decide whether the people inner
the space were comfortable or not, if the density was over
the standard and made people not feel well then the air-
conditioning would proceed to winding function rather
than cooling to release the condition. If there were no
people in the space, then the air-conditioning would be
turned off. If the number of people was more than
threshold we set, then the air-conditioning would be turned
on. If the temperature was higher than threshold, then the
cooling function would be turned on. As for central
control air-conditioning with cool-water machines, which
consumption the most electricity power, our system
dynamically turns OFF/ON the system based on air quality
data’s received from occupancy sensors. This system
overcomes the debate of static system followed by old
HVAC system, and consumes more energy.
7. Conclusion
To automate the HVAC devices and for reducing of the
energy consumed in a home, we need to create a system
which works by sensing human presence in home, it is
necessary to create a system which includes different
scenarios of using of the energy and also to provide users
with solutions to reduce the energy usage and automate
HVAC devices. This paper introduced pervasive
computing based; HVAC control system to control energy
consumption. As a result, the system can be used to
provide information and suggestions on questions such as:
how to avoid running HVAC devices or how to avoid
energy consumption if nobody occupied in home; how
much energy has to be reduced if occupants are in asleep;
and finally how to automate the system in dynamic
manner based on systems demand.
References
[1] Anand Ranganathan, "Autonomic Pervasive
Computing based on Planning", University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign.
[2] Chun-Liang Hsu, Sheng-Yuan Yang, "Design of
Sensor Modules of Active & Intelligent Energy-saving
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[3] Friedemann Mattern, Thorsten Staake, et al., "ICT for
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Energy", e-Energy 2010, April 13-15, 2010.
[4] Giuseppe Loseto, "A Semantic-based Pervasive
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70125, Bari, Italy.
[5] K.F. Fong, V.I. Hanby et al., "System optimization for
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[7] Markus Weiss, Wilhelm Kleiminger, "Smart
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[8] Matthias Kranz and Albrecht Schmidt, "Restriction,
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[9] N. A. Malik and A. Tomlinson., "Web-Services
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[12]Robert Grimm, Janet Davis, et al., "Systems
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2740
[16]Tamim Sookoor, Brian Holben et al., "Feasibility of
Retrofitting Centralized HVAC Systems for Room-
Level Zoning", IEEE, University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA, 2012.
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Short Biographies
Dr. A. Kanagaraj MCA., MSc., M.Phil., PhD., DIR., is a
teaching professional living in Tamilnadu, India. Currently
he is working as an Assistant Professor in Nehru Arts and
Science College, Coimbatore, India. He has around two
years of Industrial Experience and 5 years of Research
Experience as Project Fellow. He has experience in
handling UGC - Major Research Projects. He has
published many papers in National / International Journals
and Conferences. He published 2 books. He is a life
member of the Indian Science Congress. His Interested
areas are Data mining and Pervasive Computing.
Ms S.Sharmila MCA., M.Phil., is a teaching professional
living in Tamilnadu, India. Currently she is working as an
Assistant Professor in NGM College, Pollachi,
Coimbatore, India. She has more than four years of
teaching experience. She has published many papers in
National / International Journals and Conferences. Her
interested areas are Data mining, Software Testing and
Software Engineering.

Pervasive Computing Based Intelligent Energy Conservation System

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