Concept for an architecture of a wireless building automation

In several applications for automation, radio transmission could be a good alternative to wired field buses (see Rauchhaupt, L. and Hahniche, J., Proc. Fieldbus Conf. FeT'99, p.48-54,1999). The advantages are an easy, fast and low cost installation scenario in common with the possibility of flexible device placing. However, the specifics of radio require a very specialized protocol stack which affects the whole system architecture. Starting from the requirements of building automation, the paper shows a concept of an architecture for the integration of wireless devices into wired field buses. It is shown that radio transmission is well suited for open loop sensors and user terminals. But for actuators and backbones, it is a better choice to keep them on wires.