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12C — September 27 - October 10, 2019 — Fall Preview — M id A tlantic
Real Estate Journal
C onsulting E ngineering F irm
By Walt Herring and Nora Swanson, AKF Group Following Protocols to Achieve Reliable Smart Buildings
T
he ultimate Internet of Things (IoT) Smart Building dream is hav-
use your phone to dim the con- ference room lights? – check! Want your office tempera-
– literally – at our fingertips. However, for all devices and sensors to work together in harmony to bring our dreams to reality, required protocols and protocol integration must be fully understood. Protocols are sets of rules that govern data transfer. They must be established at the beginning of a project to make sure all devices and sen- sors that have been invested in will talk to and interact with one another. In general, there are five levels of protocol re- quired for a successful Smart Building installation:
1. Physical Protocols: your company or manufacturer standards for wires, cables, devices, sensors, etc. 2. Network Protocols: set of rules or instructions govern- ing how data is formatted, transmitted, and received on a company’s network 3. Internet Protocols: rules and instructions for relaying the network data across and beyond network boundaries. Internet Protocol (IP) is the most prevalent of the data transmission protocols. This protocol allows data to travel from one IP address across the
internet to another IP address. 4. Transmission Protocols: standards that define how to establish and maintain a conversation betweenmultiple networks. They provide the capability to separate datasets sent via IP and deliver unique information to network devic- es that need to know about it. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the most prevalent physical cable medium trans- mission protocol. 5. Application Protocols: apps are the means by which the data is consumed. This is the front end of the Smart Building protocol chain— the user interface, the web browser, the automatic email generation. The most important proto- col layers for Smart Building connectivity are the IP and TCP layers because they bring the IoT into data transmis- sion. A truly Smart Building represents the integration and aggregation of data from several types of IoT protocols. There are more available than can be listed here, but a few of the more well-known protocols are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE. Each protocol has differ- ences in transmission range, latency, and energy consump- tion. Some are wired, some are wireless; some require in-building antennas, some work off of existing cell tow- ers. The requirements of each protocol inform how physical protocols and infrastructure are designed to support the tasks at hand. Despite Smart Buildings being the gold standard of today’s commercial environ- ment, many existing buildings do not have the physical infra- structure to support TCP/IP connectivity and much of new construction considers this type of framework first-cost prohibitive. In addition, the majority of building systems (HVAC, lighting, AV, security, etc.) still use traditional, tried- and-true Network Protocols such as RS-232/485, BACNET, LonWorks, and Modbus that do not natively integrate IP and TCP. This is likely to change as the price of technol- ogy continues to drop and as case studies of existing Smart Buildings prove the invest- ment worthwhile. It is incum- bent upon design professionals to have a deep understanding of a project’s goals and needs continued on page 20C
ing an abun- d a n c e o f devices and sensors de- ployed across a building, interacting with one an- other to pro- actively and
ture activat- ed to a cer- tain degree wh e n y o u d r i v e i n t o the building g a r a g e ? – check! Want your order at the lobby
Nora Swanson
Walt Herring
analytically respond to various events, needs, and desires. The device and sensor markets are ripe with products to fulfill our every IoT dream: Want to
coffee shop ready 30 minutes after leaving the house? – check! We have entered an age of technology in which nearly everything we want is
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