A secured smart home switching system based on wireless communications and self-energy harvesting

Abstract

Due to human influence and its negative impacts on the world’s environment, the world ischanging into a cleaner and more sustainable energy system. In both private and public buildings, there isa desire to reduce electricity usage, automate appliances, and optimize the electricity usage of a building.This paper presents the design and implementation of a secured smart home switching system based onwireless communications and self-energy harvesting. The proposed secured smart home switching systemintegrates access control of the building’s electricity, energy harvesting, and storage for the active electroniccomponents and circuitries, and wireless communication for smart switches and sockets. The paper givestwo contributions to the design of smart home systems: 1) A practical design and implementation of security(access control system) for a building’s power supply which adds a locking feature such that only authorizedpersonnel are capable of altering the power state of the smart sockets and switches in a building, and;2) A model of energy harvesting and storage system for the active electronic components of the circuitries andwireless communication for smart switches and sockets. The access control involves four stages (a controlunit, a comparator unit, a memory unit, and the switching unit). The access control system provides meansof access control by having a security keypad that switchesONorOFFthe building’s electricity, provided theuser knows the security pin code (8 coded pins). The proposed system also harvests and stores energy forall the active electronic devices using a photovoltaic system with ultracapacitor energy buffer. The designedsecured smart home utilized smart power and switches, and message queuing telemetry transport for ease ofcontrolling energy usage. The experimental results obtained from extensive testing of the prototype showsan improvement in security and energy management in a building.