Improving the Ambient Temperature Control Performance in Smart Homes and Buildings

Area of Science:

• Building automation systems
• Control theory
• Environmental sensing

Background:

• Modern buildings utilize numerous electronic devices for automation, generating valuable environmental data.
• Conventional climate control systems often use basic controllers (e.g., on-off, PID) that do not leverage available environmental data.
• This limits the efficiency and responsiveness of climate control in smart buildings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate performance gains of advanced pole-placement controllers in building automation.
• To assess the impact of incorporating external variables like solar radiation and outdoor temperature.
• To compare advanced controllers against traditional on-off and simple pole-placement methods.

Main Methods:

• Implementation and evaluation of pole-placement controllers enhanced with solar radiation and external temperature data.
• Testing in both simulated and real-world environments.
• Comparison of performance metrics including Mean Squared Error (MSE) and control signal variance.

Main Results:

• Pole-placement controllers demonstrated superior performance compared to on-off controllers.
• Enhanced pole-placement controllers achieved a 17% reduction in MSE and a 40% reduction in control signal variance.
• Energy savings were marginal (approx. 1%), but reductions in MSE and variance significantly impacted energy peaks and equipment longevity.

Conclusions:

• Advanced pole-placement controllers, utilizing additional environmental variables, offer substantial performance improvements in building automation.
• The enhanced control strategy effectively reduces system errors and control fluctuations, leading to better equipment durability.
• Despite increased system complexity, the benefits in performance and equipment lifetime justify the adoption of these advanced control methods.