HyTube: A Novel Middleware Layer for Smart Building Systems

Smart building systems use cyber-physical tech-nologies to automatically control the building's operations including heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, plug load, security and other systems. In future smart building environment, the variety of devices and systems will be owned and shared by multiple parties as for an integral management system. HyTube is a novel middleware layer designed to provide unified logical device access services for multiple domain-specific applications from the heterogeneous physical devices. It aims to offer: scalability, robustness, extensibility, cost-effectiveness, data management as well as an architectural hook for extending it for cloud-based Big Data platforms. HyTube has been deployed and analysed in more than 30 energy management systems for large public and commercial buildings. Results show that HyTube is effective and efficient, and more and more networks technologies and devices are being incorporated into HyTube in real projects for further applications and improvements.