"Sensing" is a prerequisite for energy saving and emission reduction
With the development of semiconductor, microsystems, wireless communications and computer technology, the wireless sensor network technology WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks), which began to appear in the 1990s, has entered the early stage of industrial development. the early stage of industrial development. The following describes two systems that have already been put into use.
●Building Energy Consumption Monitoring System
Transmission of information on energy use such as elevator power, lighting, air conditioning, fire protection, ventilation, and high and low-voltage distribution, which is necessary for buildings, is the basis of building energy conservation and industrial energy conservation, and one of the key issues in efficiently realizing informationization of building energy conservation is to solve the problem of transmitting such information. The biggest problem encountered in architectural buildings, especially existing buildings, is the need for comprehensive wiring, which is a large amount of work, costly and destructive to the building environment. Therefore, the best way to transmit information to the building is through wireless, the traditional GSM, WLAN, SCADA and other wireless systems have high power consumption, high equipment and operating costs, inflexible networking and other limitations, and wireless sensor network technology is the best solution to solve this problem.
The building energy consumption monitoring system developed based on wireless sensor network technology came into being. The system is characterized by wireless sensor network technology based on the collection and transmission of information, on the one hand, the wireless sensor network nodes themselves collect temperature parameters, on the other hand, they are connected with a variety of energy-using equipment, through the wireless self-organizing network automatically collect real-time data dispersed throughout the electricity, water, cooling, heating, etc., so that the user can monitor the site at any time the operation of the energy-consuming equipment data and data storage and processing to implement the diagnosis, evaluation and transformation of energy consumption. The system can be used for energy consumption diagnosis, energy consumption assessment and energy consumption transformation through data storage and processing. The system is applicable to all kinds of existing buildings and new buildings, easy to organize the network, does not take up space, without the need for integrated wiring construction, fast and simple implementation of the project (as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2).
●Wireless Sensor Network Technology-based Energy Saving Management System for Split Air Conditioning
The biggest problem for units using split air conditioning is the inability to effectively manage and control split air conditioning, which leads to excessive air conditioning energy consumption and loss of comfort. The energy-saving management system for split air conditioners based on wireless sensor network technology allows users to conveniently manage their units' split air conditioners locally and remotely, and achieve energy savings through optimized management.
The system realizes reasonable control of split air conditioners by infrared light through wireless sensor network nodes based on their own temperature and humidity detection algorithms or pre-set patterns, and centralized management of split air conditioners through the network composed of nodes. Each node can be automatically networked to send all kinds of information to the main node (gateway), even including the operating status parameters of each split air conditioner. Through the management platform in the background, users can realize the selection of various working modes (e.g. timed temperature control, timed energy-saving control, timed cost control, etc.) and functions such as statistical analysis of data, so as to realize the efficient management of split air-conditioners and achieve good energy-saving effects.
Wireless sensor network to the application
In the whole information technology toward the "ubiquitous network" (Ubiquitous Computing Networks) in the direction of the development of the process, the wireless sensor network as an important part of it, has been conceptualized by the beginning of practical applications.
1997
In 1988, Dr. Mark Weisser of Xerox Corporation first proposed the concept of "wireless sensor network" (WSN).
In 1988, Dr. Mark Weisser of Xerox proposed the concept of Ubiquitous Computing for the first time, and with the continuous development of this concept, some countries in the world have already integrated the theory of ubiquitous computing into their socio-economic development plans and strategies. 2003 and 2005, the United Nations convened two global summits on the information society. In 2003 and 2005, the United Nations held two global summits on information society, both of which called on countries around the world to take active actions to build a ubiquitous information society (UIS: Ubiquitous Information Society). in April 2005, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) held a seminar on the construction of ubiquitous network society in Geneva, which explored the theory and technology of the construction of ubiquitous network society and introduced application cases of the U.S.A., Japan, Korea, Britain and Italy. , Britain, and Italy's application cases. Japan, South Korea and other countries have regarded it as a powerful engine for a new round of economic growth and an important means to improve people's livelihood.
The essence of ubiquitous network is Context Awareness, which embeds tiny computers into various objects and corners of people's lives, and the intelligent objects and corners provide various services for people through automatic perception of each other, instead of requiring people to sit in front of computers and operate complicated machines, just like personal computers nowadays. The machine. Situation awareness can be realized through the identification (IDentifier) recognition or sensor active access to information, and all through the way of wireless communication. Through the identification of identification perception that is the current momentum of development of RFID, through the sensor perception that is the wireless sensor network. Therefore, RFID and wireless sensor network should be unified into the category of ubiquitous network. At present, the practical application of RFID has been a lot, and the practical application of wireless sensor network has also begun.
The technical characteristics of wireless sensor networks are tiny node size, ultra-low power consumption, support for large-scale number of nodes, in a self-organizing way to form a multi-hop and highly reliable wireless communication network. The hardware core of the nodes is 8/16/32-bit embedded microcontrollers. The tiny size of the nodes is due to the need to be embedded in objects, and this need also requires the nodes to solve their own power supply in most cases, so ultra-low power consumption is another basic requirement for wireless sensor network nodes. Tiny size and ultra-low power consumption determines the node's wireless communication distance is short, for the need to require a longer distance transmission needs, it is realized through a multi-hop network. And the self-organization is decided based on the requirement that situational awareness needs to be implemented automatically. The realization of a self-organized, multi-hop and highly reliable network under the instability of the wireless communication link itself is a technical challenge, and is the difficulty and focus of the realization of wireless sensor network technology.
Standards determine the way forward
Currently, wireless sensor network technology has evolved to the point where a portion of the sensors, embedded MCUs and wireless communication transceivers can be integrated into a single chip. The United States and Europe, a number of large and small semiconductor companies have launched such a chip, such as TI, Freescale, Jennic, Ember, Nordic and so on. Also introduced are temperature, humidity, light, acceleration, infrared, gas detection and other low-power sensor chips. So, it is now possible to manufacture tiny wireless sensor network node hardware. Although a mainstream protocol that can become a standard has not yet been formed, the wireless sensor network communication protocol as the core of the software has emerged. In addition, the technological scope of wireless sensor networks is evolving and improving in terms of unified identification, operating systems, security mechanisms, wide-area distributed databases and back-end services. In short, the development of the technology has allowed the start of practical applications of wireless sensor networks.
However, the applications of wireless sensor networks that have begun to be carried out are based on the realization of private technology, and are still in a relatively decentralized and isolated state. Zigbee technology, which is more influential in communication, is only suitable for solving certain needs due to the problems of frequency band bypassing ability, networking and power consumption, and is still far away from the requirements of wireless sensor networks. Therefore, the technological progress of wireless sensor networks is urgently needed to develop and gradually form a mainstream standard technology from the beginning in the process of application promotion. Moreover, due to the wireless sensor network and RFID technology with the same goal, the standard should be unified to form a complete ubiquitous network of technology system.
At present, the International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission ISO/IEC is organizing the establishment of wireless sensor network working group. China's information technology standardization technical committee has also set up a wireless sensor network working group, the development of standards is underway. The working group is engaged in wireless sensor network research by the main units and related enterprises *** with the composition, is working to develop wireless sensor network standards and at the same time will be the implementation of standards to the chip, to achieve industrialization, because the success of industrialization means the success of the standard to overcome the standard and industrial detachment of the problem. Happily, the country has emerged capable of designing and producing in line with China's wireless personal area network communication standards and is expected to become the mainstream wireless sensor network hardware chip companies.
China's wireless sensor network research started not too late, the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 1999, dedicated to the relevant knowledge innovation project began the wireless sensor network research, and in the national medium and long-term scientific and technological planning program will be clearly wireless sensor network as a priority development theme. At present, wireless sensor networks have become one of the research hotspots in relevant domestic universities and research institutes. Therefore, a good academic foundation has been laid for the development of wireless sensor network standards. In recent years, the academic research on wireless sensor networks has been very active abroad, and some large semiconductor companies have even taken wireless sensor networks as one of their future development businesses. Foreign companies specializing in wireless sensor networks have also appeared in recent years.
What needs to be pointed out in particular is that the development of wireless sensor networks in Japan is even more perfect than the United States and Europe, Japan's T-Engine Forum/uID Center has long been the wireless sensor networks and RFID and even the traditional bar code and so on, united into a complete technical system, called uID technology. Contains ucode logo, various ucode labels, a new form of terminal - ubiquitous pass, wide-area distributed ubiquitous database and operating protocol ucodeRP, eTRON security architecture, UWB wireless sensor network hardware, multi-hop wireless communication protocols and other specifics, it is a very complete ubiquitous network of technology system.
Wireless sensor network must be standardized trend, otherwise, private technology under the various systems even if the solution to the frequency interference problem on the wireless communication, but also can not be very good to achieve each other compatible and interconnectivity. This will inevitably bring huge technology conversion costs, information is difficult to achieve the centralization of the background and further precision, it is difficult to form a unified ubiquitous network system, and thus can not get fast, diverse and accurate services.
Latest Market Progress
Analyzing the technical nature of wireless sensor network, if the Internet constitutes a virtual information world, changing the way of communication between people, then, wireless sensor network is to connect the virtual information world with the real physical world where people live. Therefore, analyzing the application of wireless sensor networks, the scope must be extremely wide, to be tapped into the emerging applications far from endless.
With the continuous maturation of wireless sensor network technology, more and more innovative products are bound to emerge, emerging network equipment manufacturers, emerging software and service providers, and the emerging Internet economy.
Wireless sensor networks have been initially used abroad in a wide range of fields such as environmental monitoring, industrial automation, smart homes, smart buildings, precision agriculture, intelligent transportation, logistics, medical care, supply chain management, goods management, intelligent tour guides, and mobile information services.
Some domestic active units engaged in the research and application of wireless sensor networks have also begun to apply them in the fields of energy conservation and emission reduction, power line security, emerging telecommunication information services, environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, intelligent tour guides, coal mine safety, vehicle positioning, and intelligent transportation. Special mention should be made of the first domestic wireless sensor network industry development alliance was established in November 2007 in Hangzhou, visible industry sensitive regions and enterprises have seen the broad prospects of the wireless sensor network industry and began to force.
In short, the market progress of wireless sensor network is that it is currently in the beginning of the stage, I believe that with the continuous development of technology and market, wireless sensor network technology will be a strong momentum to quickly penetrate into all walks of life, reflecting the huge prospects for industrial development.
(The author is the director of Shanghai R&D center of Hangzhou Jiahe Intelligent Control Co.