Alie El-Din Mady

A VHDL implementation of onu auto-discovery process for EPON

Recently EPON has been appeared to introduce the convergence of low-cost Ethernet equipment and fiber infrastructure, it is appeared to be the best candidate for the next-generation access network. Auto-discovery process is an important process in EPON system. . Indeed, this paper provides a MAC design following the IEEE 802.3ah standard of the MPCP auto-discovery process at the ONU side. It describes as well the validation and verification steps using an OLT model and finally, the synthesis result are presented.

Designing cost-efficient wireless sensor/actuator networks for building control systems

A modern Building Automation System (BAS) aims to enhance the functionality of interactive control strategies leading towards energy efficiency and enhanced user comfort. Typically, it is cheaper to embed the BAS within a Wireless Sensor/Actuator Network (WSAN) rather than rewire legacy. However, the cost of a WSAN deployment is a critical factor for the new buildings. In this context, we develop a co-design approach for assessing the cost of a WSAN deployment while achieving particular control performance. We apply the developed co-design strategy to a distributed control for building lighting systems. We empirically compare our developed system for building lighting control strategy with a standard PI control method to demonstrate an average of 45% reduction in energy use while maintaining the user comfort and 23% saving in the network cost.

Co-design of Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks for building controls

A Building Automation System (BAS) aims to provide good user comfort within occupied zones in a building. One can enhance the functionality of a BAS through embedding advanced control strategies within a Wireless Sensor/Actuator Network (WSAN), and also make retrofit applications possible. However, control systems that are embedded in a WSAN can perform sub-optimally if the control system and WSAN are designed independently. In this context, we develop a co-design approach for embedding BAS code within a Network Control System. We compare our developed system for building lighting control with (a) a standard PI control method to empirically demonstrate a 19% reduction in energy use and 65% improvement in user comfort, and (b) an MPC strategy that uses only presence-based control, to show 25% reduction in energy use. Our approach also improves network delay and sensor battery usage by 68% over the PI baseline.

Intelligent Hybrid Control Model for Lighting Systems Using Constraint-Based Optimisation

Lighting systems consume a considerable proportion of total energy budgets, particularly for retail and public-office applications, and hence their optimisation can save considerable amounts of energy. This paper proposes an intelligent control strategy to operate the office luminance in order to enhance user comfort and reduce energy consumption. The strategy is applied to an open office scenario, where the controller and the environments are modelled using a hybrid/multi-agent platform. The developed controller uses a constraint-based optimisation technique to compute the optimal settings.We describe the different modelling steps, including the optimisation technique, and outline the simulation results and potential energy benefits of the proposed controller.

Cyber-physical-security framework for building energy management system

Energy management systems (EMS) are used to control energy usage in buildings and campuses, by employing technologies such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and building management systems (BMS), in order to provide reliable energy supply and maximise user comfort while minimising energy usage. Historically, EMS systems were installed when potential security threats were only physical. Nowadays, EMS systems are connected to the building network and as a result directly to the outside world. This extends the attack surface to potential sophisticated cyber-attacks, which adversely impact EMS operation, resulting in service interruption and downstream financial implications. Currently, the security systems that detect attacks operate independently to those which deploy resiliency policies and use very basic methods. We propose a novel EMS cyber-physical-security framework that executes a resilient policy whenever an attack is detected using security analytics. In this framework, both the resilient policy and the security analytics are driven by EMS data, where the physical correlations between the data-points are identified to detect outliers and then the control loop is closed using an estimated value in place of the outlier. The framework has been tested using a reduced order model of a real EMS site.

Compositional model-driven design of embedded code for energy-efficient buildings

In embedded software development, model-driven design is well recognized. In this article we describe a compositional model-driven approach for auto-generating embedded code for improving the energy efficiency of building automation applications. We show how we can use a component-based hybrid-systems modelling framework to generate models for simulation and verification. Then, we auto-generate embeddable code from these models. We empirically demonstrate this approach using the hybrid-systems tool Charon, for the domain of energy-efficient lighting control for smart buildings. The paper provides a detailed description of the code generation steps and outlines some results obtained through a simple lighting example.

Model-driven diagnostics generation for industrial automation

We propose a methodology for overcoming the current approach of writing diagnostics code for industrial automation applications after the system is designed, which results in significant extra effort/cost, and potential discrepancies between design and diagnostics output. We show how we can automatically generate diagnostics from a more complex simulation model. We show how a model-transformation framework can transform a hybrid-systems simulation model into a propositional-logic diagnostics model with appropriate transformation rules. We illustrate our approach with an example from the domain of control for building lighting systems.

An End-to-End Framework for Designing Networked Control Systems

Designing a control system over Wireless Sensor/Actuator Network (WSAN) devices increases the coupling of many aspects, and the need for a sound discipline for writing/designing embedded software becomes more apparent. Such a WSAN-based control architecture is called a Networked Control System (NCS). At present, many frameworks support some steps of the NCS design flow, however there is no end-to-end solution that considers the tight integration of hardware, software and physical environment. This chapter aims to develop a fully integrated end-to-end framework for designing an NCS, from system modelling to embedded control-code generation. This framework aims to generate embedded control code that preserves the modelled system properties, and observes the hardware/software constraints of the targeted platform.

WSAN QoS Driven Control Model for Building Operations

Currently wireless based control systems lack appropriate development methodologies and tools. The control model and its underlying wireless network are typically developed separately, which can lead to unstable and suboptimal implementations. In this paper we introduce a hybrid-based design methodology that considers the performance parameters of the Wireless Sensor and Actuator Network (WSAN) in order to develop an optimized control system tailored to the specific application environment and sensor network conditions. We first identify the boundaries of the control parameters that maintain stable and optimal control model. Within these boundaries,we determine the optimal WSAN Quality of Service (QoS) parameters through a tuning process in order to reach to optimal Control/WSAN design as illustrated in the case study. The methodology has been illustrated through a distributed lighting control developed using our hybrid/multi-agent platform.

Integrated Simulation Platform for Optimized Building Operations

In order to develop an integrated system that can optimise building operations, all facets of monitoring, control and reconfiguration need to be integrated. To achieve this, we need to develop an integrated system model, together with associated sub-system interfaces. This links the low-level wireless/wired systems monitoring with multi-level control, building information management and user-preference inputs. In this paper we describe an integrated simulation platform that partially fulfils such objectives. We detail through a case study an integrated simulation platform allowing testing, refinement and optimization of the design at an early stage. The paper provides a detailed simulation results and outlines the future works.