Abstract:
This thesis contributes to the on-going research effort to further the development of the IEC 61499 in the smart grid application domain. With the introduction of the Smart Grid and Time-Of-Use (TOU) pricing, modern home automation systems must also contain built-in provisions for intelligently managing energy usage. This thesis proposes a wireless distributed approach towards a modern home automation system where control is distributed across several devices in a home. The chosen devices are extremely low-cost and lightweight ZigBee enabled devices developed by iMonitor Ltd. The approach involves developing control networks using IEC 61499 function blocks and distributing these networks across several devices. In essence, execution of IEC 61499 function blocks on the devices adds a layer of intelligence on top ZigBee mesh networking and enables design of completely customisable control applications. In order to implement such a system, an extremely lightweight and highly optimised IEC 61499 execution environment was conceived for execution of FBs on ZigBee nodes. Additionally a FB deployment tool for enabling wireless deployment via ZigBee was also developed. A distributed home automation application is demonstrated via an example AC controller application. A fan control application was also developed for illustrating TOU benefits of the system.
