Cienciaes.com: Sensor networks and the Internet of things. We spoke with Teresa Olivares Montes

2018-10-09 10:48:19

In any building, whether they are homes, offices or factories, there are many elements that consume energy: air conditioning and heating devices, lighting systems, computers and machines of different types. In addition, people circulate through the different rooms, breathe and release CO2, open and close doors or windows, turn lights on or off, and concentrate in certain places at different times. How can the building’s energy be managed so that its consumption is optimal?

One possible answer lies in the use of sensors designed to measure environmental variables in each place, connected to each other in networks that, through certain communication protocols, facilitate data for storage and analysis. The management of this data allows you to make the most appropriate decisions at all times.

Sensor networks are as useful in the city as they are in the countryside. One of the pioneering projects of our guest, Teresa Olivares Montes, Researcher at the Informatics Research Institute of the UCLM, consisted of monitoring a vineyard with a network of sensors. The vine, like any living being, needs a certain humidity, an adequate temperature, nutrients and a lot of sun to develop optimally. Teresa Olivares carried out one of the pioneering studies on the application of sensor networks in agricultural environments. The research consisted of putting electronic devices equipped with sensors capable of measuring temperature, humidity or the amount of solar radiation on the vines. The whole set was organized forming a network.

Continuing with the idea of ​​applying the knowledge of sensor networks to real life problems, Teresa Olivares’ team subsequently carried out two Ecosense projects (Intelligent Energy Management System based on Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks) whose objective was to design and build a wireless sensor network in a public building to monitor energy consumption. The team designed a network of sensors capable of monitoring different parameters distributed throughout the different rooms of the building. Temperature sensors, sensors capable of measuring the concentrations of CO2 or other pollutants, movement sensors to detect the occupancy level of the different rooms, use of equipment, etc. The data collected, together with a network of actuators that allows certain conditions to be modified and energy consumption to be controlled, turn the whole into an intelligent building.

Internet of things.

Teresa defines the Internet of things as “the fact that normal life things communicate through the Internet” If the sensor network allows communication between devices previously installed for data collection, the Internet of things includes the control and access to everyday things, such as a refrigerator, a heating thermostat, a bicycle, keys, etc. It is enough to attach a sensor to each of these objects so that, through the Internet, we can access and interact with them. Smartphones and the applications designed for these devices thus become the user interface in the “Internet of Things”.

It is estimated that by 2020 there will be around 26 billion connected objects in the world. This implies a revolution in the type of sensors, in network communication protocols, development of communication standards (WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, BLE, NFC…) and in the storage and processing of huge amounts of data (Big Data).

All this immense amount of communications and data will allow remote action and decision-making in practically any place and situation that we can think of: controlling the edible content in a refrigerator to know, remotely, on our mobile devices, what is necessary to prepare the shopping list; control the place where the tools are in a factory and detect needs; disconnect the heating or turn it on remotely in our homes, etc.

Today we are talking about sensor networks and the “Internet of Things” with Teresa Olivares Montes, Professor of Computer Systems at the Albacete Higher School of Computer Science and Researcher at the Computer Science Research Institute of the UCLM.