A Framework of Reconfigurable Transducer Nodes for Smart Home Environments

This letter presents a transducer network framework that supports the amalgamation of multiple transducers into single wireless nodes. This approach is aimed at decreasing energy consumption by reducing the number of wireless transceivers involved in such networks. To make wireless nodes easily reconfigurable, a plug and play mechanism is applied to enable the clustering of any number of transducers. Furthermore, an algorithm is proposed to dynamically detect added and removed transducers from a node. Lastly, an XML based protocol is devised to allow nodes to communicate a description of their layout, measured data and control information. To verify the proposed framework, multiple reconfigurable wireless nodes are used to monitor the dynamic condition of a multiple rooms during a period of 24 hours in order to emulate a smart home scenario.