<p> With improvements in power harvesting transducers' power density, and power reduction in communication transceiver systems, displays, sensors and energy-aware microprocessors, smart wireless network nodes are becoming ubiquitous throughout our daily life. Digital signage has gained popularity with the integration of smart wireless network nodes into the application space replacing traditional signage and badges. Primary battery sources traditionally supply energy for digital signage, however, that generates waste and maintenance costs that are counterproductive to using digital signage. Therefore, a digital signage prototype called the wireless display sensor node (WDSN) with a micro-power photovoltaic energy harvesting system was developed at UC Davis and is presented as an alternative in this work. The WDSN and node management system is comprised of an electrophoretic display, Wi-Fi radio, photovoltaic and vibration power transducers, internet connected management system, sensors and power harvesting power electronics. A holistic energy approach was used to drive the development of the proposed digital badge and signage. This approach encompasses the characterization of vibrational and photovoltaic energy sources, analyzing the energy requirement from typical digital signage and developing a power harvesting energy management system that will maximize the lifetime and allow for self sufficiency of the digital signage. To bridge the gap between the energy source and the required peripheral supplies, a multiple input and multiple outputs (MIMO) H-bridge DC to DC converter was designed to harvest and regulate photovoltaic energy, and deliver energy to the various continuously active, and charge-and-execute loads of the WDSN. The H-bridge DC to DC converter comprising of a single inductor, two input power FETs from both primary and secondary power sources, and five symmetric output power FETs to create the various supply rails, supply the regulated energy required for the radio, the display, the sensors and the microcontroller. For the charge-and-execute supplies, a constant current ramp charging was developed to transfer charge at the maximum power point current of the photovoltaic cell to the supply capacitors of the peripherals that support the charge-and-execute supply generation. The MIMO H-bridge DC to DC converter presented supports active regulation using pulse width modulation for high current loads, pulse frequency modulation for light current loads, and ramp charging for capacitive loads. The controller was designed using digital logic and the entire MIMO H-bridge DC to DC converter occupies an area of 0.36&nbsp;mm2 to 1.63&nbsp;mm2 depending on the power transistor size selection. The measured instantaneous peak power efficiency is 86% while driving a 63&nbsp;?A load with a transient energy efficiency delivered to the load is 81%. The prototype WDSN dissipates 933&nbsp;mJ to complete a server data synchronization and display refresh. The WDSN update energy when supplied with vibrational and photovoltaic power harvesting is equivalent to 7.52&nbsp;hours of casual continuous walking (34.44&nbsp;?W), 1,230 laboratory door toggles (open and close at 986&nbsp;?W) and 12&nbsp;hours of continuous office lighting (7&nbsp;am to 7&nbsp;pm with a daily total of 958&nbsp;mJ under an average of 538&nbsp;Lux of CFL lighting).</p><p>

Global energy constraints and economic conditions have placed large energy consumers under pressure to conserve resources. Several governments have acknowledged this and have employed policies to address energy shortages. In South Africa, the lacking electrical infrastructure caused severe electricity supply shortages during recent years. To alleviate the shortage, the government has revised numerous energy policies. Consumers stand to gain nancially if they embrace the opportunities o ered by the revised policies. Energy management systems provide a framework that ensures alignment with speci cations of the respective programs. Such a system requires a data consolidation platform to import and manage relevant data. A stored combination of consumption data, production data and nancial data can be used to extract information for numerous reporting applications. This study discusses the development of a data consolidation platform. The platform is used to collect and maintain energy related data. The platform is capable of consolidating a wide range of energy and production data into a single data set. The generic platform architecture o ers users the ability to manage a wide range of data from several sources. In order to generate reports, the platform was integrated with an existing software based energy management system. The integrated system provides a web-based interface that allows the generation and distribution of various reports. To do this the system accesses the consolidated data set. The developed energy information tool is used by an ESCo to gather and consolidate data from multiple client systems into a single repository. Speci c reports are generated by the integrated system and can be targeted at both consumers and governing bodies. The system complies with draft legislative guidelines and has been successfully implemented as a energy information tool in practice. / MIng (Computer and Electronic Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Global energy constraints and economic conditions have placed large energy consumers under pressure to conserve resources. Several governments have acknowledged this and have employed policies to address energy shortages. In South Africa, the lacking electrical infrastructure caused severe electricity supply shortages during recent years. To alleviate the shortage, the government has revised numerous energy policies. Consumers stand to gain nancially if they embrace the opportunities o ered by the revised policies. Energy management systems provide a framework that ensures alignment with speci cations of the respective programs. Such a system requires a data consolidation platform to import and manage relevant data. A stored combination of consumption data, production data and nancial data can be used to extract information for numerous reporting applications. This study discusses the development of a data consolidation platform. The platform is used to collect and maintain energy related data. The platform is capable of consolidating a wide range of energy and production data into a single data set. The generic platform architecture o ers users the ability to manage a wide range of data from several sources. In order to generate reports, the platform was integrated with an existing software based energy management system. The integrated system provides a web-based interface that allows the generation and distribution of various reports. To do this the system accesses the consolidated data set. The developed energy information tool is used by an ESCo to gather and consolidate data from multiple client systems into a single repository. Speci c reports are generated by the integrated system and can be targeted at both consumers and governing bodies. The system complies with draft legislative guidelines and has been successfully implemented as a energy information tool in practice. / MIng (Computer and Electronic Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

No description available.

By 2050, the world’s population is expected to reach 9.7 billion, with over half living in urban settlements (United Nations, 2015). Planning and designing new urban developments and improving existing infrastructure will create or reshape urban landscapes and will carry significant implications for energy consumption, infrastructure costs, and the urban microclimate on a larger scale. Researchers and industry professionals must recognize how changes in land use affect the urban microclimate and, therefore, building energy consumption. Built environment and microclimate studies commonly involve modeling or experimenting with mass and energy exchanges between natural and the built environment. Current methods to quantify these exchanges include the isolated use of microclimate and building energy simulation tools. However, current urban planning and building design processes lack a holistic and seamless approach to quantifying all thermodynamic interactions between natural and built environments; nor is there a method for communicating and visualizing the simulated building energy data. This dissertation has developed a coupling method to quantify the effects of the urban microclimate on building energy consumption. The coupling method was tested on a medium-sized office building and applied to a design case, a redevelopment project in Pittsburgh, PA. Three distinct approaches were used. First, to develop the coupling method, a study was conducted to quantify the importance of accurate microclimate model initialization for achieving simulation results that represent measured data. This initialization study was conducted for 24 cases in the Pittsburgh climate. The initialization study developed a rule-based method for estimating the number of ENVI-met simulations needed to predict the microclimate for an annual period. Second, a coupling method was developed to quantify these microclimate effects on building energy consumption. The Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL) building was used as a test-case for this coupling method to measure improvement in predicting building heating and cooling energy consumption. Results show that the coupling method, more than the TMY3 weather data used for energy simulations, can improve building energy consumption predictions for the winter and summer months. Third, to demonstrate industry implications, the coupling method was applied to a design case, the Lower Hill District Redevelopment, Pittsburgh, PA. Comparing the decoupled energy model and TMY3 weather data revealed a high degree of variation in the heating and cooling energy consumption. Overall results reinforced the hypothesis that building surface level coupling is not essential if the energy model accounts for the microclimate effects. A Design Decision Support (DDS) method was also developed as a tool for project stakeholders to communicate high-fidelity simulated energy data.

The research goal of this thesis is to support the development of energy information systems for energy-aware industrial manufacturers in the form of reusable artifacts.

Across many domains, systems suppliers are challenged by the complexity of their systems and the speed at which their systems must be changed in order to meet the needs of customers or the societies which the systems support. Stakeholder needs are ever more complex: appearing, disappearing, changing and interacting faster than solutions able to address them can be instantiated. Similarly, the systems themselves continually change as a result of both external and internal influences, such as damage, changing environment, upgrades, reconfiguration, replacement, etc. In the event of situations unforeseen at design time, personnel (for example maintainers or operators) close to the point of employment may have to modify systems in response to the evolving situation, and to do this in a timely manner so that the system and/or System-of-Systems (SoS: a set of systems that have to interoperate) can achieve their aims. This research was motivated by the problem of designing-in re-configurability to the constituent systems of a SoS to enable the SoS and its systems to effectively and efficiently counter the effects of unforeseen events that adversely affect fitness-for purpose whilst operational. This research shows that a SoS does not achieve or maintain fitness-for-purpose because it cannot implement the correct, timely and complete transfer of Material, Energy and Information (MEI) between its constituents and with its external environment that is necessary to achieve a desired outcome; i.e. the purpose.

Zeitgenössische Fertigungstechnik ist im Begriff, einen Einfluss auf die Architekturentwicklung auszuüben wie zuletzt in der Industrialisierung des 19. Jahrhunderts. Während neue computergestützte Möglichkeiten auf breiter Basis diskutiert und erprobt werden, bleiben ihre Wurzeln und ihr Verhältnis zu früheren Fertigungstechniken im Dunkeln. Christoph Schindler betrachtet Architektur aus der Perspektive der Fertigungstechnik. Sein Ziel ist es, die von aktueller Informationstechnik getriebene gegenwärtige Forschung im Bauwesen historisch zu kontextualisieren und als Teil einer kontinuierlichen Entwicklung zu identifizieren. Im Zentrum der Arbeit steht als These das Schema eines allgemeinen technikgeschichtlichen Periodisierungsmodells, das handwerkliche, industrielle und informationstechnische Fertigung zu integrieren versucht. Grundlage dieses Periodisierungsmodells ist das Verhältnis der drei Kategorien Stoff, Energie und Information in der jeweiligen fertigungstechnischen Periode. Die Stichhaltigkeit des Modells wird anhand der Geschichte des Holzbaus überprüft, da der Holzbau wie keine andere Konstruktionsweise die Beziehungen zwischen Fertigungstechnik und Bauen umfassender über einen vergleichbar langen Zeitraum illustriert. Es wird untersucht, ob das vorgeschlagene Modell sich anhand von historischen Fakten belegen lässt – 
wie grundlegende Veränderungen in der Fertigungstechnik die Holzverarbeitung beeinflusst und wie diese jeweils Konstruktion und Erscheinungsbild der Holzarchitektur geprägt haben. / Contemporary production technology is about to exert an influence on the development of architecture as fundamentally as experienced during Industrialization in the 19th century. While new computer-aided methods are widely discussed and applied, their roots and relation to previous production technology remain obscure. Christoph Schindler analyzes architecture from the perspective of production technology. It aims to contextualize contemporary research in the building industry—driven by information technology—and identify it as part of a continuous development in history of technology. The thesis is built around the scheme of a periodization model, which intends to integrate fabrication within manual, industrial and information technology. It is based on the relation between the three categories matter, energy, and information in each respective period. The validity of the model is proven with help of history of timber architecture, as no other construction method illustrates the relation between processing technology, fabrication methods and architecture more comprehensively over a comparable period of time. It will be studied whether the proposed model can be circumstantiated with historical facts— how constitutive changes in process technology influenced wood processing and how they respectively coined construction and appearance of timber architecture.

<div>Energy-efficient communication has remained the primary bottleneck in achieving fully energy-autonomous IoT nodes. Several scenarios including In-Sensor-Analytics (ISA), Collaborative Intelligence (CI) and Context-Aware-Switching (CAS) of the cluster-head during CI have been explored to trade-off the energies required for communication and computation in a wireless sensor network deployed in a mesh for multi-sensor measurement. A real-time co-optimization algorithm was developed for minimizing the energy consumption in the network for maximizing the overall battery lifetime of individual nodes.</div><div><br></div><div>The difficulty of achieving the design goals of lifetime, information accuracy, transmission distance, and cost, using traditional battery powered devices has driven significant research in energy-harvested wireless sensor nodes. This challenge is further amplified by the inherent power intensive nature of long-range communication when sensor networks are required to span vast areas such as agricultural fields and remote terrain. Solar power is a common energy source is wireless sensor nodes, however, it is not reliable due to fluctuations in power stemming from the changing seasons and weather conditions. This paper tackles these issues by presenting a perpetually-powered, energy-harvesting sensor node which utilizes a minimally sized solar cell and is capable of long range communication by dynamically co-optimizing energy consumption and information transfer, termed as Energy-Information Dynamic Co-Optimization (EICO). This energy-information intelligence is achieved by adaptive duty cycling of information transfer based on the total amount of energy available from the harvester and charge storage element to optimize the energy consumption of the sensor node, while employing event driven communication to minimize loss of information. We show results of continuous monitoring across 1Km without replacing the battery and maintaining an information accuracy of at least 95%.</div><div><br></div><div>Decades of continuous scaling in semiconductor technology has resulted in a drastic reduction in the cost and size of unit computing. This has enabled the design and development of small form factor wearable devices which communicate with each other to form a network around the body, commonly known as the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). These devices have found significant application for medical purposes such as reading surface bio-potential signals for monitoring, diagnosis, and therapy. One such device for the management of oropharyngeal swallowing disorders is described in this thesis. Radio wave transmission over air is the commonly used method of communication among these devices, but in recent years Human Body Communication has shown great promise to replace wireless communication for information exchange in a WBAN. However, there are very few studies in literature, that systematically study the channel loss of capacitive HBC for <i>wearable devices</i> over a wide frequency range with different terminations at the receiver, partly due to the need for <i>miniaturized wearable devices</i> for an accurate study. This thesis also measures and explores the channel loss of capacitive HBC from 100KHz to 1GHz for both high-impedance and 50Ohm terminations using wearable, battery powered devices; which is mandatory for accurate measurement of the HBC channel-loss, due to ground coupling effects. The measured results provide a consistent wearable, wide-frequency HBC channel loss data and could serve as a backbone for the emerging field of HBC by aiding in the selection of an appropriate operation frequency and termination.</div><div><br></div><div>Lastly, the power and security benefits of human body communication is demonstrated by extending it to animals (animal body communication). A sub-inch^3, custom-designed sensor node is built using off the shelf components which is capable of sensing and transmitting biopotential signals, through the body of the rat at significantly lower powers compared to traditional wireless transmissions. In-vivo experimental analysis proves that ABC successfully transmits acquired electrocardiogram (EKG) signals through the body with correlation accuracy >99% when compared to traditional wireless communication modalities, with a 50x reduction in power consumption.</div>