Octave Technology Blog

A group of key companies across Europe and North America have united to form the EnOcean Alliance with the mission to enable intelligent green buildings based on EnOcean energy harvesting wireless technology. The foundation of the EnOcean Alliance addresses the demand in today’s environment for a wireless eco-system that combines a broad range of interoperable, flexible and uncomplicated monitoring and control products for use in and around residential, commercial and industrial buildings. In wireless building automation EnOcean self-powered wireless technology has the largest install base worldwide - with over 70 shipping customers, 300 available products, with 10,000s of equipped buildings many with thousands of interoperable nodes.

To further develop EnOcean technology, the Alliance will focus on formalizing the specifications for the interoperability of the sensor profiles for the wireless products operating in unlicensed frequency bands and subsequently ratify as an international standard.

The Alliance has three membership classes:
·  Promoters - innovators and key players who will lead, define and drive the Alliance
·  Participants - companies and suppliers providing product and services using the Alliance technology
·  Associate Members - building professionals, academics and smaller distribution partners interested in the technology, advancements, examples, training and so on.

“The EnOcean Alliance will provide significant advantages to members through the use of future-oriented maintenance-free wireless monitoring and control technology,” commented Graham Martin, Founder of the EnOcean Alliance. “Building professionals benefit from unlimited flexibility by allowing selection of a broad base of interoperable products thus enabling simple, speedy and cost-attractive adaptation to changing requirements.” 

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I found this article that discusses the future of Bluetooth and looks at the potentials for the future.

During 2007, it was announced by the Bluetooth SIG that ULP (Ultra Low Power) Bluetooth is to be incorporated into the Bluetooth specification and is set to change the landscape of wireless technologies. This new low power wireless technology can be used to transfer simple values between compact devices, and can run for up to ten years on one button cell battery. This means that a whole new class of Bluetooth connectivity is opening up, addressing product segments such as watches, training shoes, automation, remote controls and medical sensors … or wherever your imagination takes you.With such a plethora of possible use cases, the market is expected to be huge. There are a number of expected market segments, of which one is brand new:

•  FAN (fashion area network) – linking people’s personal items; such as shoes, outerwear, jewelry and especially watches to their mobile phone.

•  M2M (machine to machine) - including industrial and home automation, as well as healthcare.

•  LBS (location based services) – placing ULP Bluetooth devices in restaurants and shopping malls to allow consumers to locate a restaurant menu or a sports shop.

This is a very exciting time right now to be looking at the future of wireless communications, and particularly from a vendor perspective, we are looking into the jaws of another potential billion-unit market.

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Here’s an article from Network World about  the Department of Defense awarding $15.7 million to 24 universities in 18 states to perform advanced research on everything from biometrics and wireless sensor networks to anti-radio jamming technology.   Universities across the country will receive funding to research and develop new technologies.  One specific award of interest to folks in our space is the award to North Dakota State University which will help the schools researchers develop faster, more secure wireless sensor networks.  For example, recent technology papers from the school detail work being done on heterogeneous sensor networks (HSN).  Researchers detailed a secure and efficient routing protocol for such networks called two tier secure routing (TTSR). TTSR takes advantage of powerful high-end sensors in an HSN. The security analysis demonstrates that TTSR can defend typical attacks on sensor routing. The performance evaluation shows that TTSR has higher delivery ratio, lower end-to-end delay and energy consumption than a popular sensor network routing protocol, according to the paper.

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Intel has found a way to stretch a Wi-Fi signal from one antenna to another located more than 60 miles away. Intel has announced plans to sell a specialized Wi-Fi platform later this year that can send data from a city to outlying rural areas tens of miles away, connecting sparsely populated villages to the Internet. The wireless technology, called the rural connectivity platform (RCP), will be helpful to computer-equipped students in poor countries.  A sample radio is pictured below:

The Intel project and forthcoming product “sound like a huge step forward” in terms of usable bandwidth over long-range lengths, says Deborah Estrin, professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Estrin develops technology for sensor networks in remote areas that monitor seismic activity, among other things. She says that these sensors are spread out over large areas and need to transmit large amounts of data. Previous low-power, inexpensive wireless communication technologies could only stretch a few kilometers, she says. “What’s important is that Intel is getting much longer distances.”

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I came across a great article in WirelessNet Design Line  that gives a great overview of wireless embedded standards. ZigBEE, Z-Wave, INSTEON, Wavenis, and WirelessHART all have a share of the wireless embedded control market but so far there is no clear winner. This article attempts to explain why. 

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The group over at M2M Magazine has a piece about a survey from On World about the growth of industrial sensor networks. The market research firm found that one in three of surveyed companies currently use wireless sensor technology, and another half expect to deploy solutions over the next year and a half.   According the survey results, much of growth stems from interest in solving efficiency and cost issues associated with machine maintenance.  The chart below shows the expected growth rate for certain markets by 2011:

However, we’ve certainly seen reports like this before.  I have market reports from 2005 that target 2008 / 2009 were the large growth years, now we’re looking to 2011.  I think it’s easy for a company to say in a survey that they plan to adopt the technology; it’s a different story when the time comes to write the check, especially in the tightening economy.

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Our friends over at M2M magazine have posted and article about Siemens Wireless Modules, Munich, Germany, announcing it has been purchased by private equity investor Granville Baird, London, U.K., and T-Mobile Venture Fund, a business unit of Deutsche Telekom, Bonn, Germany.

According to a press release, Siemens WM will spin off into a new legal entity when the transaction is completed during the second quarter of 2008.  The sale likely marks one of the most significant acquisitions within the machine-to-machine industry since Wavecom SA, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, bought Sony Ericsson in 2006, but the acquisition may not come as a shock to some industry observers. During the latter half of 2007, there were murmurings throughout the M2M industry of a possible acquisition involving the module provider; however, 2007 came and went without a sign of a deal in the making.

Sam Lucero, senior analyst, ABI Research, Oyster Bay, N.Y., says the deal is very “timely” taking into consideration the condition of the machine-to-machine industry and T-Mobile’s efforts to get a bigger portion of the M2M pie.  Let’s see how this plays out in 2008 and if T-Mobile can make strides in the M2M space.

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A press release came out today for Awarepoint Corporation announcing their patent on “techniques for accurate position location and tracking suitable for a wide range of facilities”. According to the press release Awarepoint is “using underlying ZigBee technology and patented computational algorithms, Awarepoint’s Real-time Awareness Solution returns asset location within 1-3 meters. Awarepoint’s position accuracy goes beyond just room level, providing defined area location accuracy.”

We will keep an eye on the activity from Awarepoint as they claim further patents are pending covering algorithmic techniques, such as self-calibration, floor discrimination, various sensor reading filtering, multi-path detection and mitigation, and validity checking. Congrats to them on securing their IP.

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Everybody is talking about “going green” these days and I think in most cases, that doesn’t really mean much.  But in an article from Automatedbuildings.com, Robert Eckery from EnOcean lays out a plan for companies to reduce energy consumption for certain applications by up to 40%, that’s pretty green!  The article explores the use of self-powered wireless controls for HVAC&R, monitoring and lighting control systems within two separate case studies – one in a hotel and the other in a college dormitory.  In both cases, the dollar and energy savings is pretty significant. It’s certainly geared towards a plug for EnOceans products, but if they can deliver the results outlined in the article then they’ll help drive the market that’s still seeing adoption lag.   It’s worth reading and seeing the innovative products that are available and how they can actually go “green”.

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Looks like Zigbee and BACnet have teamed up to provide some wireless solutions… well, they’re continuing discussions anyway; discussions that started over two years ago. 

According to the recent press release “Proposed Addendum q would lead to a significant reduction in the cost of installation at the sensor and controller level by reducing the amount of wired networking required in a building automation system, according to Jerry Martocci, convener of the BACnet committee’s Wireless Networking working group. “Marrying these two technologies seemed obvious,” said Martocci. “BACnet already had the object and services model designed specifically for building automation but no wireless network, and ZigBee had the wireless capabilities but no object model for building automation. We just had to put the two together to benefit from the synergies.” For various technical reasons, battery-operated devices, including sensors, will probably be ZigBee only, but powered controllers would have BACnet/ZigBee capability. Martocci notes that the “mesh” networking among ZigBee nodes leads to self-healing networks, so that even if a link between two nodes is obstructed, the “mesh” network can route around the obstructed link, leading to reliable networks.”

Seems like a good move for both standards, it may be some time before we see products on the market designed to fit into this combined standard, but integrators will take this as a sign to start putting the technologies together now before products hit the street.

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