Samitha Kuruppu

Evaluation of wireless home automation technologies

Introduction of Wireless Home Automation (WHA) has become a positive inspiration to the new home and renovation projects, as it increases the quality of life and comfort of the inhabitants, simultaneously facilitating energy conservation and environmental sustainability. Generally WHA networks comprise of wireless embedded sensors and actuators that intelligently interconnect with each other through a suitable wireless architecture. Many wireless technologies have been emerged recently targeting WHA, hence selecting the optimal technology is challenging. In this article, we present an evaluation of these emerging wireless technologies and discuss their suitability for smart home networks.

Goal-Oriented Prosumer Community Groups for the Smart Grid

Energy demand is continually rising, worldwide. Most of the current demand is met by non-renewable energy sources, like coal, petroleum, and natural gas. However, currently, society is faced with the problem of dwindling and scarce non-renewable energy resources, resulting in a shortage of energy. Moreover, the process of energy production from non-renewable sources is increasing greenhouse gas emissions, leading to unpleasant and potentially dangerous climatic changes. Therefore, in today?s world, the focus is on inducing users to reduce their household energy consumption, and shift to using energy produced from renewable sources, such as solar, water, and wind. Not only this, but users are being encouraged to generate the green energy, and to either store the surplus for future usage or to feed it back into the utility grid. In order to evolve such bidirectional energy and information flow, the concept of the smart-grid has been proposed [1].

Wireless Sensor Network Transport Protocol - A State of the Art

In this article, we present a survey of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) existing Transport Protocols. We have evaluated the design concepts of different protocols based on congestion control, reliability support and source traffic priority support. Then we draw the concluding remarks, while highlighting up-and-coming research challenges for WSN transport protocols, which should be addressed further in prospective designs.

Wireless Sensor Networks: Challenges Ahead

The aim of this paper is to analyze the different Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) transport protocols by identifying various experimental parameters in order to undertake a comparative evaluation. To build the groundwork, we first discuss the generic design for a transport protocol based on three key concepts, congestion control, reliability support and priority support. The basis of this design was developed by assessing several aspects of numerous transport protocols. However they all using different set of parameters and settings and hence it is difficult to benchmark one against the other. In this paper, we discuss the simulation settings like packet size, number of exploited sensors and their distribution in the field, buffer size, coverage area and power levels.

Energy resource management in smart home: state of the art and challenges ahead

Residential sector registers one of the highest energy consumers in the world; hence efficient Energy Resource Management (ERM) scheme has become essential in new home or renovation projects. Smart home concept is an appealing way to promote the ERM. According to the literature, diverse research efforts have been emerged to investigate the ERM in smart homes. However in order to succeed in future researches, it is imperative to realize the current position of the ERM in the smart home research field. A clear identification of gaps in existing literature would significantly benefit the new researchers to understand the challenges ahead. In this article, we critically discuss the state of the art and the open research issues of the ERM in smart home.

Evaluation of Wireless Home Automation Technologies for Smart Mining Camps in Remote Western Australia

Remote Western Australian (WA) is featured with harsh environmental and living conditions, but extremely rich soil with large mineral deposits. Mining companies have invested immensely in those areas, and mining camps have been constructed with thousands of Single Person Quarter (SPQ) units to fulfill mining worker accommodation. Major challenge faced by SPQ suppliers is improving the quality of life of the workers, while minimizing the energy cost. In recent years, Wireless Home Automation (WHA) has become an ideal choice for SPQs to achieve these targets. In this paper we perform one of the initial steps of the feasibility study of integrating WHA to SPQs. Generally in a WHA network, wireless sensors and actuators intelligently interconnect with each other through a suitable WHA technology. This paper evaluates different WHA technologies to find out the most suitable technology to implement WHA specifically for SPQs based on the practical requirements outlined by our industry collaborator, who is an Australian mobile accommodation company, supplying smart SPQs to mining camps.