Integrated Sensor Systems for Indoor Applications: Ubiquitous Monitoring for Improved Health, Comfort and Safety

Abstract

People spend an increasing amount of their time indoors. Thus, environmental conditions and air quality but also safety aspects are of specific concern in indoor settings. This contribution gives an overview of chemical sensor technologies used for indoor applications, focusing on explosive gas leak and fire detection as well as indoor air quality as the most relevant applications. These applications are traditionally addressed with a variety of technologies, such as metal-oxide semiconductor gas sensors for gas leak detection or infrared sensors for CO 2 monitoring. Increased requirements led to multisensor developments especially for security applications such as fire detection which demand a high reliability of the sensor system. In recent years, modern signal processing techniques have increasingly been used to overcome typical problems of chemical sensors, especially limited selectivity as well as drift and aging. Some examples for state-of-the-art chemical sensor systems for indoor applications are given showing the growing potential in this area.

Real‐time force doors detection system using distributed sensors and neural networks

“…In addition to sensor systems for entire buildings, there are also smaller scale systems that can be used in homes to improve health, comfort, and safety . Even when security is one of the key features of these kind of systems, they cannot prevent dangers, since they usually can only notify about the situation when the damage has already been done (eg, when the door is already open or the window is broken).…”

“…In addition to sensor systems for entire buildings, there are also smaller scale systems that can be used in homes to improve health, comfort, and safety. 33 Even when security is one of the PASCUAL ESPADA ET AL.…”

Indoor air quality and energy management through real-time sensing in commercial buildings

“…Stupakov et al [123] Citation details: [14], for surface temperature and heat flow in historical buildings such as museums [15], carbon dioxide (CO2) sensors for determining occupancy disturbances in commercial buildings [16], demand-based supervisory temperature control sensors for measuring temperature at breathing levels in largescale rooms [17,18] or integrated sensing systems for indoor applications [19,20].…”

“…Calibration of energy models also requires good sensing reliability. In calibrating energy models it is crucial to analyse, interpret and model complex interactions and uncertainty [17,18] from continuously updated field data [4,19,20], for example, in dynamic commissioning and monitoring of buildings [21]. Using cell-phone traffic as a proxy for occupancy, builds on completely independent sensors -owners purchase cell phones -but is reliable only to the extent that the owners use their phones, and not wired communication networks.…”

4.2.4 - Integriertes Präkonzentrator-Gassensor-Mikrosystem zur Detektion von Spurengasen in Innenraumluft

“…Die Luftqualität in Innenräumen kann durch gasförmige Komponenten, besonders flüchtige organische Verbindungen (Volatile organic compounds, VOCs), beeinträchtigt werden. Neben Messung der Summenkonzentration an VOC rückt die Messung einzelner besonders giftiger Komponenten zunehmend in das Interesse [1,2]. Einige dieser Substanzen können bereits in sehr geringen Konzentrationen im unteren ppb-Bereich Gesundheitsprobleme hervorrufen.…”