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Energy Efcient and Low-Cost Indoor Environment Monitoring System Based on the IEEE 1451 Standard
Anuj Kumar, I. P. Singh, and S. K. Sud
AbstractAn Indoor Environment Monitoring System (IEMS) for monitoring the concentrations of indoor air pollutant gases and indoor environmental parameters has been developed in compliance with IEEE1451.2 standard. The sensor array is implemented using the electrochemical sensors. The smart transducer interface module (STIM) is implemented using the PIC18F4550 microcontroller. Network Capable Application Processor (NCAP) implemented in LabVIEW 9.0 is based on the IEEE 1451.1 standard. The NCAP is connected to the STIM via a USB 2.0 Transducer Independent Interface. The level of indoor environment parameters and information regarding the STIM can be seen on the graphical user interface (GUI) of the NCAP. Sensors are recalibrated using the potentiometer adjustment technique of signal conditioning circuits. The IEMS is low cost, energy efcient, and portable. Index TermsElectrochemical gas sensor, environment monitoring, IEEE 1451, network capable application processor (NCAP), smart transducer interface module (STIM), transducer independent interface.

I. INTRODUCTION NERGY and efciency have now become an important concern for sustained growth and overall development [1]. For a developing country like India, the situation is further grieved because major part of energy, to drive the economy, is imported [2]. Today it is widely accepted that human activities are responsible for high level of pollution and climate change. According to the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, global greenhouse gas emissions from 1970 to 2004, due to human activities rose by 70% [3]. United Nation Environment Program (UNEP) report states that buildings are using the lions share (40%) of the available global energy and are responsible for one third of global greenhouse gas emissions, both in developed and developing countries [4]. The main source of greenhouse gas emissions from buildings is the energy consumption. Buildings are also major emitters greenhouse gases. The life cycle cost analof other nonysis (LCA) approach reveals that over 80% of greenhouse gas emissions takes place during operational phase of buildings, where energy is being used for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, appliances, and other applications (normal life span

Manuscript received December 06, 2010; revised February 07, 2011 and March 12, 2011; accepted April 14, 2011. Date of publication April 29, 2011; date of current version August 24, 2011. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was Dr. Larry Nagahara. The authors are with the Instrument Design Development Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India 110016 (e-mail: anujkumariitd@gmail.com; ipsingh@iddc.iitd.ac.in; sksud@iddc.iitd.ac.in). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/JSEN.2011.2148171

of a building is considered to be 50100 years) [1]. A smaller percentage of emissions, roughly from 10% to 20% are due to manufacturing of materials, construction, maintenance, renovation, transportation, and demolition [1]. Major greenhouse , CO, , , suspended particulate pollutant include matter (SPM), Lead aerosol, volatile organic compounds, and other toxics [5]. From different studies, it is well revealed that when human beings comes in contact these chemicals/pollutants have adverse effect on human health [6], [7]. These chemicals are responsible for disease like lung cancer, pneumonia, asthma, chronic bronchitis, coronary artery disease, and chronic pulmonary disease [6], [7]. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to provide better indoor environment to the occupants it becomes necessity that built environment should be continuously monitored [8]. Study shows that by constant monitoring and using commercially available technologies, it is possible to reduce carbon emissions by 60% or more, which translates to 1.35 billion tones of carbon [9]. Built environment has become an important area of research because of its inuence on human health and energy consumption prole. The inside unconditioned environment affects indoor physical environment, and subsequently health and quality of life of its occupants [10]. Achieving occupant comfort is the result of a combination of environmental conditions, such as air quality, indoor air temperature, relative humidity, mean radiant temperature, air velocity, illumination, sound, etc. Of these, the most important factors are air quality and thermal comfort of the built environment [11]. If this is ignored discomfort will be felt, which, in turn, will lead to physiological stress affecting human health [9], [12]. Hence, there is a growing demand for indoor environment monitoring and control systems [13][19]. In view of ever increasing pollution sources with toxic chemicals, these systems should have the facilities to detect and quantify the sources of pollution rapidly [20], [21]. In this paper, a technique has been proposed and based on the proposed technique an indoor environment monitoring system has been developed. It is fully operational and follows international standards such as IEEE 1451, ASHRAE 55 2004, and ISO 7730 and gives results with scientically acceptable accuracy. It has added advantages such as portability, low cost, fast response time, easy to operate, and low-power consumption. II. SENSORS A sensor is a device that detects a physical quantity and responds with an electrical signal [22]. A gas sensor is a transducer which converts input energy of one form to output energy of another form. It detects gas molecules and produces an electrical signal with a magnitude proportional to the concentration of the

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gas [23]. Earlier there was no gas sensor which can be 100% sensitive to a particular gas. Recently, few researchers have reported the gas sensors with improved performance [14], [18]. There are ve commonly used technologies for gas monitors and these are: electrochemical, solid state, infrared, catalytic bead, and photo ionization [18]. More details of these sensors including their usage, lifetime, advantages, and disadvantages are given elsewhere [24][30]. The electrochemical gas sensors are capable of detecting different gases with high accuracy. These sensors have many advantageous aspects such as minimum power consumptions as compared to catalytic bead and semiconductor sensors, cost effectiveness, and miniature size. These sensors are being extensively used in various applications like: automotive, consumer, commercial, industrial, and indoor environment monitoring [31][33].
Fig. 1. Basic electrochemical sensor [32].

III. ELECTROCHEMICAL SENSOR Electrochemical sensors are used to determine the concentrations of various analytes in testing samples such as uids and dissolved solid materials. Electrochemical sensors are frequently used in occupational safety, medical engineering, process measuring engineering, environmental analysis, etc. [33], [34]. Electrochemical sensors have electrode arrays with two, three or more electrodes, which are called auxiliary electrode, reference electrode, and working electrodes [35], [36]. Electrochemical gas sensors are well known for detecting and quantifying toxic gases such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulphide, nitrogen oxides, chlorine, sulphur dioxide, and the like. The electrodes of an electrochemical sensor provide a surface at which an oxidation or a reduction reaction occurs to provide a mechanism whereby the ionic conduction of an electrolyte solution in contact with the electrodes is coupled with the electron conduction of each electrode to provide a complete circuit for the current [32], [37]. In a typical electrochemical gas sensor, the gas to be measured typically passes from the atmosphere into the sensor housing through a gas porous or gas permeable membrane to a working electrode where a chemical reaction occurs [38]. Electrochemical sensors, such as PH sensors, ion selective sensors, and redox sensors, are equipped with electrical conductors to allow electrical signals to be transmitted to and from electrodes contained within the sensor. An electrochemical sensor used for measuring PH, ORP, or other specic ion concentrations is typically comprised of three parts: a specimen sensing ion electrode, a reference cell, and an amplier that translates signal into useable information that can be read [39]. Electrochemical sensors require very little power to operate. In fact, their power consumption is the lowest among all sensor types available for gas monitoring. Moreover, they are very linear and have good selectivity, excellent repeatability, and accuracy. For these reasons, these sensors are widely used in portable instruments that contain multiple sensors. They are the most popular sensors in conned space environment applications [40]. However, their disadvantages include; shortened lifetime in very dry and very hot areas, sensitive to EMF/RFI, limited storage life, and maximum response time. These disadvantages have been rectied by using the special strategies, further details could be found in [37][40]. IV. THEORY OF OPERATION Electrochemical sensors operate by reacting with the gas of interest and producing an electrical signal proportional to the gas concentration. A typical electrochemical sensor consists of a sensing electrode or working electrode, reference electrode, and a counter electrode separated by a thin layer of electrolyte [32], [37], as shown in Fig. 1. Gas that comes in contact with the sensor rst passes through a small capillary type opening and then diffuses through a hydrophobic barrier, and eventually reaches the electrode surface. This approach is adopted to allow the proper amount of gas to react at the sensing electrode to produce a sufcient electrical signal, while preventing the electrolyte from leaking out of the sensor. The gas that diffuses through the barrier reacts at the surface of the sensing electrode involving either an oxidation or reduction mechanism. These reactions are catalyzed by the electrode materials specically developed for the gas of interest. With a resistor connected across the sensing electrode, a current proportional to the gas concentration ows between the anode and the cathode. The current can be measured to determine the gas concentration. Because the current is generated in the process, the electrochemical sensor is often described as an amperometric gas sensor [41][44]. Three electrode sensors require an external driving voltage. It is important to have a stable and constant potential at the sensing electrode. In reality, the sensing electrode potential does not remain constant due to the continuous electrochemical reaction taking place on the surface of the electrode. It causes deterioration of the performance of the sensor over extended periods of time. To improve the performance of the sensor, a reference electrode is introduced. The reference electrode is placed within the electrolyte in close proximity to the sensing electrode. A xed stable constant potential is applied to the sensing electrode. The reference electrode maintains the value of this xed voltage at the sensing electrode. No current ows to or from the reference electrode. The gas molecules react at the sensing electrode and the current ow between the sensing and the counter electrode is measured and is typically related directly to the gas

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Fig. 2. IEEE 1451 standard family structure [45]. Fig. 3. Detailed block diagram of the IEM system.

concentration. The value of the voltage applied to the sensing electrode makes the sensor specic to the target gas. In a three electrode sensor, there is normally a jumper which connects the working and reference electrodes. If it is removed during storage, it will take a long time for the sensor to stabilize and be ready to be used. Three electrode sensors require a bias voltage between the electrodes and two electrode sensors do not require any bias voltage. For example, Oxygen sensors do not require a bias voltage [37], [41]. V. IEEE 1451 STANDARD AND FAMILY STRUCTURE The IEEE 1451, a family of Smart Transducer Interface Standards, describes a set of open, common, network-independent communication interfaces for connecting transducers to microprocessors, instrumentation systems, and control/eld networks. The IEEE 1451 standard makes it easier for transducer manufacturers and system designers to develop smart devices and to interface those devices to networks, systems, and instruments. The standard is comprised of seven parts and each of them has different aspects of the interface standard, as shown in Fig. 2 [45]. In this work, we have used IEEE 1451 standard to develop the IEM system. The standard IEEE 1451.1 is used to design the network capable application processors. We also used IEEE 1451.2 standard to develop the smart transducer interface module with electrochemical gas sensors and implemented transducer electronic data sheet. The transducer independent interface is implemented according to the IEEE 1451.7 standard. VI. DEVELOPED IEM SYTEM Indoor environment monitoring system (IEMS) is a complete real-time monitoring and data recording system. It automatically measures and records the air quality and environmental parameter. The developed IEMS can measure and analyze the , concentration of major air pollutant gases such as CO, , , and , along with the temperature and relative humidity. The STIM is linked to a Network Capable Application Processor (NCAP) PC through Transducer Independent Interface (TII). The detailed block diagram and photograph of devel-

Fig. 4. Photograph of the developed IEM system (laboratory setup).

oped IEM system is shown in Figs. 3 and 4, respectively. The developed IEM system has ten channels out of which eight are used for developed sensing module, while the other two channels are open for further processing. VII. IMPLEMENTATION OF SENSOR ARRAY AND STIM A. Sensor Array The selected sensor has several advantages such as low-power consumption, low cost, high accuracy, and capable of detecting different gases. The detailed explanation of the selected electrochemical sensors including their usage, advantages, and disadvantages are given in [33] and [46][54]. The low-power consumption and low-cost electrochemical sensors with additional temperature and humidity sensors are suitable to use as an array for cost effective and energy efcient indoor environment monitoring system to measure the air pollutant gases with oxygen and environmental parameter. The specications of the sensors used in the indoor environment monitoring system are given in Table I. All these sensors have high

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TABLE I SPECIFICATIONS OF THE SENSORS USED IN THE IEMS

Fig. 5. Detailed block diagram of the developed STIM.

The relationship between the output voltage and the gas concentration in ppm can be expressed by the following expressions:
TABLE II IMPLEMENTATION OF SENSOR MODULE

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) where Concentration of CO gas in ppm, Output voltage of CO-CF sensor module in volts, gas in ppm, Output Concentration of sensor module in volts, Convoltage of centration of gas in ppm, Output voltage sensor module in volts, Concentration of of gas in %, Output voltage of sensor module in Concentration of gas in ppm, volts, Output voltage sensor module in volts, Indoor envi Output voltage of ronment temperature in , temperature module in volts, RH Indoor relative humidity in Output voltage of humidity module in volts, %, Concentration of gas in ppm, Output voltage of -BF sensor module in volts. In Fig. 5, the sensor module blocks are connected to the sequential channel (ADC1-ADC8) and two channels (ADC9 and ADC11) are open. B. Smart Transducer Interface Module (STIM) The development of a smart transducer interface module with electrochemical gas sensors has to be designed according to IEEE 1451.2 standard. The STIM must be capable of handling the actuator interface, supporting TEDS, communicating with NCAP, and supporting TII interface. A microcontroller

sensitivity and selectivity to detect gas with improved property such as relative insensitivity to uctuations in relative humidity, EMF/RF noise, low-power consumptions, high response time, and long lifetime [47][54]. The sensors are connected to signal conditioning circuits. The signal conditioning circuit is based on potentiostatic circuit. The designing of a potentiostatic circuit with a high input bias current amplier and without precision will impact the sensor sensitivity resulting in increased sensor to sensor variation. Hence, the precise, ultra-low input bias current amplier (less than 5 nA), such as LMP7721, OP90, and OP296 are used to design the potentiostatic circuits. The inbuilt ampliers, OP90 and LMP7721 improve the circuit performance and allow the electrochemical sensor to detect low gas concentration with high accuracy. The input bias current of these ampliers LMP7721 and OP90 is 3 fA and 4 nA, respectively, at room temperature (25 C) [42][44]. The power consumption, response time, sensing range, and operating voltage of the implemented sensor module are given in Table II.

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is selected to support all above functions. PIC 18F4550 microcontroller has been chosen to develop the STIM. The developed STIM includes all the above mentioned facilities. The power consumption of the developed STIM was observed as 42.3467 mW. The detailed block diagram of the developed STIM is shown in Fig. 5. 1) MMC Interface Module: The PIC 18F4550 microcontroller and MMC interface module has been developed. The MMC is a ash memory storage device designed to provide high capacity, nonvolatile, and rewritable storage in a small size. These devices are being frequently used in many electronic consumer goods such as cameras, computers, GPS systems, mobile phones, and PDAs, etc. The capacity of the MMC can be increased at any time for further use. Presently, the available capacities of these memories lie in the range of 128 MB to 32 GB. The MMC can be interfaced to microcontroller using two different protocols: the SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) protocol and SD (Serial Digital) protocol. As the SPI protocol is being widely used, it is preferred over SD protocol in this module. The standard MMC has nine pins and these pins have different function depending on the interface protocol. The function of each pin in both the SD and SPI modes of operation are given in [55], [56]. Operation of the MMC in SPI Mode: The SPI bus is a synchronous serial bus standard, introduced by Motorola, that operates in a full duplex mode. During operation, the SPI bus is operated in the masterslave mode where the master device initiates the data transfer, selection of a slave, and provides a clock for the slaves. The selected slave responds and sends its data to the master at each clock pulse. The SPI bus can operate with a single master device and it can operate one or more slave devices simultaneously. Such kind of interface is called a four wire interface. In this module, the master sends out data on line master output, slave input (MOSI) and received data on line master input, slave output (MISO). During the operation of MMC device in SPI mode, The MMC can use only six pins. Among these six pins; two pins may be used for power supply, whereas other four pins are xed to be interfaced with the microcontroller. The ), descriptions of interfaced pins are given as: power ( ground, chip select, CLK, data-out, and data-in. At power-up, the MMC automatically responds to the SD bus protocol. The card is switched to SPI mode if the chip select (CS) signal is asserted during reception of the reset commands. But when the card is in SPI mode, it only responds to SPI commands. Hence, the host may reset a card by switching the power supply OFF and then ON again. An MMC has a set of registers that provides the information about the status of the card. The operation of the card in SPI mode is given by following registers: Card identication register (CID), Card specic data register (CSD), SD conguration register (SCR), and Operation control register (OCR) [55]. Structure of Transducer Electronic Data Sheet: The MMC in SPI mode can support single block and multiple block operations. In this paper, we have chosen the multiple block operation according to the requirements of the system. Initially, a multiple block le (MYFILE.TXT) is created in MMC separately , - , Temperature, Relfor each parameter viz. CO, , -BF, and . In the multiple block ative Humidity,

Fig. 6. Memory map of the micro SD card.

reading operation, the card sends data to each block having its own CRC check which is attached to the end of data block. While in multiple block writing operation, the host sends the , - , Temperature, Reladata of each sensor viz. CO, tive Humidity, , -BF, and which is saved in separate le (.TXTFILE), simultaneously. Once developed the system is switched ON, the save button on the front panel of LabVIEW software is pushed (click ON) to save data in MMC in TXT format. After clicking ON the save button the system will start, saving data in real time. When the memory card is full the front panel of LabVIEW will display the time out error. At this point, it is required that the data should be transferred in notepad and to make the MMC free for further use. The transferred data in notepad has exibility to save it in EXCEL sheet and other analysis software. To increase the system autonomy the system is made compatible to use 1 GB memory capacity MMC. Here, the 1 GB MMC is divided into ten blocks; out of which eight blocks are of 125 MB each for channel 1 to channel 8. One block is of 44 Bytes is used as register bank and remaining space equal to 25165780 Bytes is kept blank. The memory map of multiple blocks in MMC is shown in Fig. 6. All channels are congured as to specify all the mandatory information. Subsequently, one separate channel is allotted to each parameter. Table III consists of enumeration of the channels dened in the STIM. VIII. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TRANSDUCER INDEPENDENT INTERFACE (TII) A parallel port interface between STIM and NCAP based on the IEEE 1451.2 standard has been developed and discussed in detail using SPI data transfer protocols [14], [16], [57]. In this investigation, the USB 2.0 based TII between the STIM and NCAP PC has been used. The TII and data transfer protocols used are based on the IEEE 1451.7 standard [45]. One side of TII is connected with the STIM and the other side is interfaced with NCAP PC (USB port). The USB is a four wire interface with two data lines and two power lines. Here, the STIM receives power from the USB, hence no external

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TABLE III ENUMERATION OF THE CHANNELS DEFINED IN THE STIM

power supply is required and the data transfer rate supported by USB 2.0 may be up to 480 Mb/s. The data transferred on a USB bus can be represented in four ways: bulk transfer, interrupt transfer, isochronous transfer, and control transfer and all these are based on the IEEE 1394 USB standard [58]. In this study, the interrupt transfers have been used. Interrupt transfers, are used to transfer small amounts of data with a high bandwidth, where the data are to be transferred as quickly as possible without delay. In USB, if a device requires the attention of the host, it must wait until the host polls it before it can report its need for urgent attention. An interrupt request is queued by the device until the host polls USB device asking for data. The interrupt packets can be in the size of 1 to 8 Bytes at low speed, 1 to 64 Bytes at full speed, and up to 1024 Bytes at high speed. The USB 2.0 has many advantages such as no extra power supply required, high speed as compared to other interface, automatic device detection, hot-pluggable, reliability, low cost and low-power consumption. The maximum power available to an external device is limited up to 100 mA at 5.0 V. If the power requirement is more than 100 mA, a separate power supply is required. Some of the PIC18 series microcontroller can be directly supported by USB interface [58], [59]. For example, the PIC 18F4550 microcontroller contains a full-speed compatible USB 2.0 interface that allows communication between a host PC and the microcontroller. In this study, the PIC 18F4550 microcontroller has been used with pins RC4 (pin 23) and RC5 (pin 24) and pins of the USB connector, reconnected to the spectively. The library function of PIC 18F4550 microcontroller has been explained through micro C language and is given as follows. HID_Enable: This function enables USB communication and requires two arguments such as the rear-buffer address and the write-buffer address. It must be called before any other functions of the USB library, and it returns no data. HID_Read: This function receives data from the USB bus and stores it in the receive-buffer. It has no arguments but returns the number of characters received.

HID_Write: This function sends data from the write-buffer to the USB bus. The name of the buffer (the same buffer used in the initialization) and the length of the data to be sent must be specied as arguments to the function. This function does not return any data. HID_Disable: This function disables the USB data transfer. It has no arguments and returns no data. The developed NCAP module is based on LabVIEW 9.0. In this paragraph, we will discuss about the communication method to access instrument and control supported by LabVIEW. There are various communication methods between NCAP and STIM which include: GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus), Serial Communication, VXI (VME Extension for Instrumentation), LXI (LAN Extension for Instrumentation), VISA (Virtual Instrument Software Architecture), DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange), OLE (Object Linking and Embedding or Automation), TCP/IP (Transmission Control protocol/Internet Protocol), Data Socket, DAQ (Data Acquisition), NI-DAQmx (Data Acquisition for MAC), File I/O (Input/Output), and CIN (Code Interface Node). In this study, we have used VISA communication method for the USB based most recent system. VISA is a standard application programming interface (API) for instrument I/O communication. VISA is a means for talking to GPIB, VXI or serial instruments. VISA is not LabVIEW specic, but is a standard available in many languages. When a LabVIEW instrument driver uses VISA write, an appropriate driver for the type of communication being used is called [60]. This allows the same API to control a number of instruments of different types. A VI written to perform a write operation to an instrument will not need to be changed if the user switches from a GPIB to a serial device. Only the resource name must be modied where instrument unlock is used. Another benet of using VISA is that it is platform independence. Different platforms have different denitions for items, like the size of an integer variable. VISA will perform the automatic conversion of the size of an integer variable. The main work in a VISA application is in the initialization. GPIB communications require the address string to be passed when ever a driver is called. In a large application changes in the instrument, like using a serial instrument instead of GPIB instrument require considerable changes. An application using VISA would require changing only the input to the VISA open VI. The resulting instrument reference would still be valid for the VISA drivers, requiring no change. VISA drivers present exibility. The VISA drivers VIs are located in the instrument I/O section of the function palette. The VISA subpalette contains a wide range of program functions. Main palette contains standard VISA driver VIs. These VIs allows opening communication session, reading and writing data, asserting a trigger, and closing communications. In addition to the standard VISA VIs, there are a number of advanced VISA functions. These are contained in the VISA advanced subpalette and three subpalettes on the advanced palette. The rst subpalette on the VISA advanced palette is the bus/ interface subpalette. It contains VIs used to deal with interfacespecic needs. There is VIs to set the serial buffer size, ush the serial buffer, and send a serial break. The VISA VXI Cmd or Query VI allows sending a command or query, or receiving a response to a previously sent query based on the mode input.

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Fig. 7. (a)(d) STIM kernel ow chart.

The next subpalette is the event handling palette. The VIs in this palette acts on specied events. Examples of events are triggers, VXI signals, and service requests. Finally, the register

access subpalette allows reading, writing, and moving specied length words of data from a specied address. The low-level register access subpalette allows peeking and pokes specied

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bit length values from specied register addresses. The VISA driver performs three functions such as congure an instrument, take a measurement, or check the status. First of all, initialization and conguration of the STIM setup was carried. The initial conguration can allow to the STIM software to work successfully for the desired measurement or testing process. The STIM software has been used to take measurement, read specic data, and save the data in MMC from the sensor modules. Using the STIM software, the real-time graphical waveform and digital output of the sensor modules are displayed in NCAP PC (LabVIEW front panel). IX. GENERAL PROTOCOLS The data transfer functions have been implemented using the protocols described in the IEEE 1451.2 [20]. The active control of the developed system is handled by the NCAP. A data transport frame begins by the NCAP sending an address to the STIM. The complete address species whether the data should be written or to be read in the MMC from the STIM and which channel with corresponding function is involved. Then, the data and . is transferred from the NCAP to the STIM via Thus, the whole system is controlled through the NCAP and provides the power to the STIM. The reset condition of the sensors is handled manually through JFET. X. THE STIM KERNEL MAIN CONTROL PROGRAM The STIM kernel and ow chart has been illustrated in Fig. 7(a)(d) and the STIM program has been developed in C language. The STIM kernel program has three main functions: trigger, data transport, and interrupt. Each of these functions has special tasks and works cooperatively with the NCAP. The developed STIM kernel program can perform only for the eight sensing module. If the extra sensor module are to be connected in the future, modication in the STIM kernal program is required. The STIM kernel program has been divided into eight parts like in the sensor module. Each part of these eight sensor module have been further divided into three blocks such as: i) read analog input and then send it to USB; ii) write on le; and iii) open le (MMC) and save data with date and time. After receiving power, the STIM kernel executes all initializations routines including the TII inialization, memory clearing process, loading the TEDS in MMC, setting the channel data buffers, and status registers. Subsequently, it enters into a permanent loop (a loop that executes for ever) and goes through the processes, as shown in the Fig. 7(a). The developed software modules have been saved in the 32 kB ash/EE program memory of the PIC18F4550. XI. THE NCAP PROGRAM The developed NCAP is in accordance with IEEE 1451.1 standard [21]. Its logical componets are included in two groups: support and application. The components of support are the transducer interface, the network interface, and the operating system. The transducer interface block encapsulates the details of the transducer hardware implementation with a programming model when the NCAP is connected to a STIM. The network interface block encapsulates the details of the different
Fig. 9. Front panel of indoor environment monitoring system.

Fig. 8. NCAP program ow chart.

networks protocols implementations behind a set of communication methods. Whereas the operating system provides an interface with applications. The use of NCAP includes a PC with USB connection as the hardware component and a software component fully developed in LabVIEW 9.0.

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Fig. 10. Block diagram of CO module.

Fig. 12. Block diagram of NO module.

Fig. 11. Block diagram of CO module.

Fig. 13. Block diagram of O module.

The NCAP program has two main subprograms: controlling of the STIM and providing the Graphical User Interface (GUI). The STIM controlling program excutes data transport and interrupt request functions. In addition, it also supports the TII through the USB 2.0. The GUI displays the STIM information, the output of the sensor module in digital and graphical waveforms, and the status of the MMC. The real-time data are saved on the basis of set value of sample/s. Hence, NCAP GUI can be used for the samples in the range of 1100 s. Moreover, it also provides the facility to add the user interaction to trigger the STIM and send functional address to the required channel. The ow chart of the LabVIEW program and a front panel of the NCAP GUI are shown in Figs. 8 and 9, respectively. The front panel of the indoor environment monitoring system handles function, input and outputs, while the ow chart performs the work of NCAP. The front panel has a knob for setting the time interval, start button, data save/start button in MMC, stop button, and a digital and graphical output. Here, the developed NCAP module can perform for the eight sensing module. A

LabVIEW program is executed by pressing the arrow or the run button located in the palette at the top of the front panel window. While the VI is executing, the Run button (broken arrows) changes to a black color, as depicted in Fig. 9. All coding in LabVIEW is done as given in the block diagrams from Figs. 1017. The block diagram accompanies the front panel, as shown in Fig. 9. In the block diagram, the outer rectangular structure represents a while loop and the inner rectangular structure is represented by the conditional structure and controlling structure of the VI. The controlling structure which is accessible from the structure palette is shown in Figs. 1017. The controlling and conditional structure operation for the sensing module is given in Figs. 1017. Initially, a delay (wait function timer) of the input signal is added through the USB. The timer will now delay the execution of the loop by ten times on the setting of the sample rate knob at the front panel in 1 s. If ). the knob is set at one, the sample rate will be 1 s ( The software in the loop must now be set up to send and receive 8 bit data to the STIM via the USB port. The ags of VI are set

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Fig. 14. Block diagram of SO D .

Fig. 16. Block diagram of temperature module.

Fig. 15. Block diagram of Extra (SO -BF) module.

Fig. 17. Block diagram of Relative Humidity module.

on the basis of STIM such as the temperature sensor module of the ag 97

value. The orange line represents the data being passed from the control into the VI. Function palettes and structure palettes are same for Figs. 1017. XII. CALIBRATION OF THE SENSORS

is set on the conditional structure and other sensor module such (connected as humidity sensor module is the ag 98 [ sensor module in ADC 2)] is set on the conditional structure. The data of the developed eight sensor module is saved in MMC for selected ag 108

with corresponding date and time. The collected data (8 bits) may be passed through LabVIEW as a string, an array of integers. Finally, the application involves converting the 8 bit data to the units of the measured parameters. This is done with a conversion factor such as multiplication, subtraction, adding, and division related to convert 8 bit data from the USB into decimal

The sensors are already calibrated by manufacturer and the same have been used in the developed IEM system. But due to the requirement of high precision in the measurement at low concentrations, the eld calibration of the sensor is needed so that more accurate results can be achieved by the developed system [61], [62]. In the eld calibration, the comparison between the results of the developed IEM system to the available standard system from known manufactures has been carried out. The differences are then adjusted so that the reading matches with the standard system reading within the allowed calibration tolerance. These ) in adjustments are made by applying a simple offset ( the sensor module using a two-point calibration at the extremes of the expected range by utilizing special electrical current ) adjustments. The common readings and potentiometer ( schematic diagram of all electrochemical sensor calibration

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Fig. 18. Schematic diagram of sensor calibration circuit. Fig. 19. Measure and record the real-time indoor environment parameters (CO, CO , SO -BF, SO -D , NO , O , T, and RH). TABLE V INDOOR AIR QUALITY WITH THERMAL PARAMETER MEASUREMENT DATA IN SITU

TABLE IV SENSOR MODULE ACCURACY (AFTER CALIBRATION)

circuit is shown in Fig. 18, whereas the accuracy of the each calibrated sensor is given in Table IV. XIII. RESULTS The main aim of this research paper is to develop an indoor environment monitoring system (IEMS), which is procient in the measuring common indoor air pollutant concentrations and the environmental parameters by a sensor array of electrochemical sensors. The system is based on the IEEE 1451, ASHRAE 552004, and ISO 7730 standards. Having developed the electrochemical sensor array system, the standard transducer interface module (STIM), the transducer independent interface (TII), and the network capable application processor (NCAP) program have also been successfully developed. The STIM, TII, and NCAP modules were developed using the guidelines provided by the IEEE 1451.2, IEEE 1451.7, and IEEE 1451.1 standards. The developed IEM system has three main parts: i) STIM; ii) TII; and iii) NCAP. Though the NCAP is dependent on self powered PC or Laptop it does not consume any power. Thus, total power consumption of the developed IEM System is the sum of power consumed by STIM and TII module only.

The total power consumption of the IEM system is found to be 45.3675 mW. The sensors were recalibrated through the eld calibration; by comparing the results of the developed IEM system with the available standard instruments from known manufactures. This was achieved to verify the accuracy of the developed system. The current indoor air pollutant and environmental parameter levels can be directly read from the NCAP GUI. Online data is saved on a memory card (MMC) to be used for further processing. These sensors are highly sensitive to EMF/RFI, and due care was taken to shield the system to prevent the degradation of the sensor performance by using appropriate PVC holders and multicore PCB. The recommended temperature and humidity specied by the manufacturer for proper functioning of these sensors is within a temperature range of 21 C to 27 C and relative humidity of less than 50% at 21 C to 27 C. A set of real-time eld measurements of the indoor gases , , -BF, , and sensors such as CO, were recorded in a normal laboratory environment. Fig. 19 shows their concentration levels together with temperature and humidity levels in the Electronics Lab (WS129) for duration of 1 min on 25 June 2010. Table V shows the minimum, maximum levels, and 1 h mean of the indoor air quality with thermal parameter data in situ.

KUMAR et al.: ENERGY EFFICIENT AND LOW-COST INDOOR ENVIRONMENT MONITORING SYSTEM BASED ON THE IEEE 1451 STANDARD

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XIV. CONCLUSION The indoor environment monitoring system has been successfully developed in compliance with the IEEE 1451, ASHREA 552004, and ISO 7730 standards and consists of the following functional blocks: the STIM, the TII, and the NCAP. The main aim of the IEEE 1451 standard is to provide an industry standard interface to efciently connect transducers to microcontrollers and to connect microcontrollers to a network. The STIM driver (which forms a part of the NCAP Model) uses the network communication capabilities of the LabVIEW 9.0. The ten smart transducers have plug and play capability: the STIM can be moved from one NCAP to another. The electrochemical sensors have been successfully used in real-time monitoring target gas concentrations and environmental parameters. The usage of these sensors adds several advantages to a system such as low-power consumption, low cost, fast response, ability to produce online measurement, etc. The calibration of the sensor with the appropriate accuracy is benecial for the energy efciency in the building automation. REFERENCES
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Anuj Kumar received the M.Sc. degree in physics (electronics) from M.J.P.R University, Bareilly, India, in 1998, the M.Phil. degree in instrumentation from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, Roorkee, in 2000, and the M.Tech. degree in instrumentation from NIT Krukshetra, India, in 2004. Currently, he is a Senior Research Student in the IDD Centre, IIT Delhi. His area of research is in smart sensing system, intelligent system, and instrumentation electronics.

I. P. Singh was born in Allahabad, India, in 1947. He received the B.E. degree in mechanical engineering from REC Durgapur, Durgapur, India, in 1969, the M.Tech. degree in design engineering and the Ph.D. degree in solid mechanics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, in 1971 and 1978, respectively. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the Instrument Design Development Centre at IIT Delhi. His current interests include microcontroller applications, instrumentations, and composite materials.

S. K. Sud was born in Lahore, India, in 1946. He received the B.E. degree in electronics and communication and the M.E. degree in applied electronics and servomechanisms from the University of Roorkee (now the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee), Roorkee, in 1967 and 1969, respectively. Currently, he is working as Chief Design Engineer at the Instrument Design Development Centre, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. His eld of interests includes electronic instrumentation, microprocessor and microcontroller applications, hybrid electric vehicles, and microturbine controllers.