This thesis addresses a multi-phase research and development project that spanned nearly
four years, targeted at providing an ultra high-efficiency, user-friendly, and economic
intelligent lighting solution for commercial facility applications, initially targeting
underground parking specifically. The system would leverage the strengths of four key
technologies: high brightness white Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), wireless sensor and
actuator networks, single board computers, and cloud computing. An introduction to
these technologies and an overview of how they were combined to build an intelligent
lighting solution is given, followed by an in-depth description of the design and
implementation of one of the main subsystems – the Sensor Middleware System –
residing on a single board computer.
Newly-available LED luminaires (a.k.a. light fixtures) bring the combination of high
efficiency, reliability, illumination quality, and long-lifetime to the lighting market.
Emerging low-power – and recently low-cost – 802.15.4 wireless networks offer high
controllability and responsiveness to deployed luminaires and sensors. The cost-
associativity, low maintenance, and easy build-up of Internet Data Center “cloud”
computing resources make data collection and remote management infrastructure for
Building Automation Systems accessible to even small companies. Additionally, these
resources can be much more appropriately sized and allocated, which reduces energy use.
These technologies are combined to form an Intelligent Lighting System (ILS). Fitting
well within the Internet of Things paradigm, this highly distributed messaging-based
“system of systems” was designed to be reliable through loose coupling – spanning
multiple network layers and messaging protocols. Its goal was to deliver significant
energy savings over incumbent technologies, configurable and responsive lighting service
behaviour, and improved experience for users within the facility (pedestrians and drivers)
and those interacting with its web-based tools (building managers and ILS
administrators). The ILS was partitioned into three main subsystems as follows. The
installed Wireless Field Network (WFN) of luminaires and sensors provided coordinated
scheduled and real-time output level adjustment (i.e. dimming), with the help of motion
sensor triggers. The Monitoring and Configuration System (MCS) in the cloud provided
remote data collection and a web-based monitoring and configuration Graphical User
Interface application. Network hardware and Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM)
were responsible for tying these subsystems together. The MOM layer that provided the
message brokering, translating, envelope wrapping, and guaranteed delivery services
between the WFN and MCS, as well as field supervisory and quality-of-service functions
for the WFN, was called the Sensor Middleware System (SMS). It was hosted on a
single board computer located at the facility. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/6094 |
| Date | 30 April 2015 |
| Creators | Fischer, Michael |
| Contributors | Wu, Kui, Agathoklis, Panajotis |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/ |
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