How to make the next generation smart home wireless network GREEN
What is the next generation SMART Home Network
In a SMART home, control devices and monitoring sensors throughout the house are wirelessly connected to each other and a central control station such as a set top box. This box in turn can talk to the outside world by a cable or Internet connection. These devices and sensors can include home security systems, home health monitoring, entertainment such as music, TV and video; environmental controls for heating and air conditioning, location awareness (who is where in the home), watering plants, feeding pets, and many others.
These services in turn can be monitored and controlled locally via a handheld remote control (the Smart Home Dashboard) or remotely via Internet or cell phone.
What are the benefits for the consumer?-
RF4CE remote controls provide a variety of benefits to consumers from increased and centralized services to the benefits of no longer seeing broken remotes wrapped in duct tape and rubber bands.
The greatest benefit however may be ease of use. ZigBee RF4CE is an industry standard for wireless radio technology and allows remote controls to transmit through walls, furniture and floors, there is no longer the need to point and shoot with a remote control. You no longer have to aim the remote at the small IR sensor in order to change channels or watch movies. As RF (radio frequency) – like Wi-Fi and cordless phone technologies – penetrates most materials, it is now possible to hide the ugly components of the home network. Set top boxes, VCRs, alarm systems, DVD players, etc., can all be hidden away in closets or in furniture.
As ZigBee RF4CE is an open standard, it makes it easy for developers to create a wide range of devices and services that are interoperable and will talk to each other without need for elaborate programming, dangling dongles or adapters. This includes the home’s entertainment, environmental control and security systems, as well as the sensors for movement, humidity, health monitoring, etc. As long as these devices adhere to the ZigBee RF4CE specification they should speak to each other.
Another benefit is GREEN. An important component of ZigBee RF4CE is ultra low power – the creation of devices and controllers that do not require a lot of power. For example, by using the GreenPeak communication controller, it is possible to build remote controls that can run for up to ten years on a single watch cell battery. It is possible to design a diverse spectrum of sensor devices, controls and switches that can run for the life of the device without ever having to have their batteries replaced or recharged. Depending on application, it is even possible to build sensors and switches that don’t require any power supply at all. For example, light switches that generate enough power simply from the action of your fingers switching them on and off, or moving the dial, to transmit the control pulse across the room to a lamp or automated door.
No more duct tape and rubber bands!
Most people have had the experience of using a remote control that is only held together using duct tape or rubber bands. The battery compartment doors on most remotes are fragile and easily break. By using ZigBee RF4CE ultra low power technology in remote controls, it is no longer necessary to use removable batteries. Instead the battery can be hard-wired to the circuit board. With no need access batteries for replacement, there is no need for battery compartments. Hence, no more duct tape. In addition, without the need to design a battery compartment, remote control developers can design remotes with intriguing new slim shapes. They can also add cool new features like “Find Me”
No more lost remote controls. Press the “Find Me” button on the TV set or set top box and the missing remote starts beeping or flashing, making it easy to find no matter where in the house it is hiding.
What are the benefits for the service providers? Cable companies and service providers are looking for new options to sell services. Battling in a very competitive and commoditized marketplace, the ability to provide and charge for a wide range of services is a very attractive option for them. Since the end of 2009, cable companies and service providers have been rolling out test projects to see if this new market model will work for them and for their customers.
The new Push-messaging feature allows for a variety of new remote control capabilities including tele-voting and gaming, personal messages and reminders, real-time sports results, stock information and residential sensor network monitoring. Push-messaging also enables operators to create new opportunities for advertising revenues via server initiated commercial push messages on the consumers’ remote control.
How to make these services and devices GREEN?
One of the biggest challenges that consumers and service providers will have in the future
is maintaining a wide range of sensor and control devices located throughout the Smart home. For ease of use and installation, it makes much more sense to have these powered by either batteries or by energy harvesting technologies. Unfortunately, energy harvesting is still in its early phases and solutions are too expensive for wide deployment. Batteries are widely available but often require changing or recharging.
In addition, batteries are not green. Filled with hazardous chemicals and heavy metals, the manufacturing, distribution and eventual disposal of these batteries creates a dangerous threat to our environment. In addition, the actual mining process to obtain the raw ingredients, as well as the industrial manufacturing processes, requires a lot of energy, water, and chemicals, thereby subjecting our planet to a heavy carbon footprint.
Batteries are not GREEN. However, there are ways to greatly cut down the requirement of using batteries while preserving batteries’ ease of use and ease of installation. If batteries themselves are not green, at least their use can be.
The solution is developing a wireless network with such a low energy requirement that batteries never need changing or only require changing every several years. This low power wireless network, based on IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee RF4CE (Radio Frequency For Consumer Electronics) provides this option.
How to design an ultra low power wireless network?
Last year, the ZigBee Alliance partnered with several of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world to form ZigBee RF4CE. This industry partnership signaled the development of an entire new generation of remote control devices – for TVs, for home and office automation, for many other types of remote control products that communicate via low power RF instead of the decades old IR (infrared).
It all comes down to the design of the radio chip that runs the wireless network. By using a communication controller centric chip design instead of a microcontroller centric design (MCU), along with synchronized wake-ups, it is possible to reduce overall power consumption by 65% or more.
Most low power processor centric radio designs require a microcontroller to handle all the intelligence for the transceiver. This requires the microcontroller to be awake the entire time, which requires additional power. By using a more energy efficient communication controller approach, the transceiver can transmit and receive the data independently from the microprocessor. Thus the microprocessor is only awakened and used when it is needed to further process the data.
Synchronizing the wake ups means that the communications controller decides when to wake up and check for messages. The device can be off most of the entire time – thereby greatly reducing overall energy consumption. This is especially effective for the home’s various environmental, security and location sensors. Because of the scheduler and synchronizer inside the communication controller, the system only wakes up for a brief moment to check to see if there are any messages and then goes back to sleep.
By using a hardware based scheduler and synchronizer within the chip itself, the radio only wakes up as needed to see if there is any data that needs to be sent. If not, it returns to sleep. If there is data to be sent, the controller then wakes up the microcontroller. The chip then communicates the information and then goes back to sleep until the next time it is scheduled to wake. 9999 times out of 10,000 – there is no message to be sent and the controller does not need to energize the microprocessor. Every time that data is sent, the chips also transmit a synchronization message to ensure that they all wake up together on the next duty cycle.
Because of these power savings, instead of having to change batteries every six months or a year, it is now possible to have devices that will run for a decade or more or a single watch type cell battery.
The age of the SMART and GREEN home network is coming. For decades, people have been talking about the new “connected” home but until now there has not been effective drivers – except for those early innovators who demand new and cool. However, with the potential of marketing new services for cable companies and service providers, as well as the power and ecological advantages of ultra low power wireless, that day is here. These products are in the process of being rolled out and within a short time should become commonplace.
Future generations will laugh at us when we explain about our duct taped remotes and the need to change batteries on a regular basis.
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GreenPeak (http://www.greenpeak.com) is a fabless semiconductor company and is a leader in ultra low power wireless and battery-free communication technology for consumer electronics and wireless sense and control applications. This revolutionary technology, based on the IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee wireless networking standard, utilizes energy harvesting to facilitate battery-free operation in a totally wireless environment, without the need for either communications or power connectivity.
