Energy Management for Smart Homes—State of the Art

Abstract

Smart home is a concept that aims to enhance the comfort of residents and facilitate household activities. The smart home is an application of ubiquitous computing which can provide the user with context-aware automated or assistive services in the form of ambient intelligence, remote control of home appliances, or automation. Smart homes attempt to integrate smartness into homes to guarantee the residents’ convenience, safety, and security, while conserving the energy. The capabilities of a smart home in the context of different applications, have been scrutinized for this investigation. Different proposed architectures, protocols, and infrastructures have been taken into consideration. As the data management process is a vital part of a smart home system, many procedures of data collection, storage, and analysis have been surveyed. Methods of data acquisition has also been discussed. Existing challenges, pros, and cons of proposed schemes along with future perspectives of smart homes are identified in this report, which is intended to promote future research directions.

Home Energy Management System Concepts, Configurations, and Technologies for the Smart Grid

“…This modular architecture allows the HEMS to function even when one of its components breaks down. [22] and [23] present a comprehensive overview of computing trends in HEMSs. Some of the seminal literature on HEMS computing trends is listed in Table 1.…”

“…Since Internet of Things (IoT) devices in smart homes can generate a lot of data, some amount of processing may have to be carried out at the gateway level to reduce operational costs by averting the transmission of large data volumes to the cloud. The gateway can process a sizeable amount of data and can also retain sensitive data that should not be transmitted over the internet [23].…”

“…The various sensors used in HEMS are listed in Table 2. Measuring devices quantify the usage of resources such as gas, electricity, or water [23]. They also signal the current state of the system to the HEMS.…”

“…For wireless networks, the mesh topology is preferable as it can bypass obstacles inside a home. The following criteria help determine the choice of communication protocol [23]:…”

Localisation of Room Occupants in Home Environments using Unobtrusive Sensing Solutions

“…They include monitoring devices that are not worn or held on any part of the human body. Recently, these devices have been applied in many health-related and other indoor settings, such as monitoring at-risk individuals [7], the performance of Activity of Daily Living (ADLs) [8], exercise rehabilitation [9] and localisation frameworks [10], [11]. Whilst some of these sensing solutions can work independently, others need to be integrated with wearable solutions.…”