This paper presents an energy-efficient lighting control system for open-plan offices with two novel features: A versatile 'plug-and-play' wireless-networked sensing and actuation system, and a control method incorporating multiple management strategies to provide occupant-specific lighting. Workstation-based wireless photosensors are employed to measure task illuminance, and individual addressability of wireless-enabled dimmable luminaires increases the freedom of the lighting system to fulfil various lighting requirements. Daylight harvesting, occupancy control and light level tuning strategies are formulated into an optimisation problem that generates light outputs for each luminaire to produce the desired lighting at each workstation with minimal energy usage. A pilot study of the wireless-networked lighting system implemented in a small open-plan office has shown more than 60% energy savings potential compared to conventional practice without any control.
Miniaturized, distributed, networked sensors — called motes — promise to be smaller, less expensive and more versatile than other sensing alternatives. While these motes may have less individual reliability, high accuracy for the overall system is still desirable. Sensor validation and fusion algorithms provide a mechanism to extract pertinent information from massively sensed data and identify incipient sensor failures. Fuzzy approaches have proven to be effective and robust in challenging sensor validation and fusion applications. The algorithm developed in this paper — called mote-FVF (fuzzy validation and fusion) — uses a fuzzy approach to define the correlation among sensor readings, assign a confidence value to each of them, and perform a fused weighted average. A sensor network implementing mote-FVF for monitoring the illuminance in a dimmable fluorescent lighting environment empirically demonstrates the timely response of the algorithm to sudden changes in normal operating conditions while correctly isolating faulty sensor readings.
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