(Press-News.org) If these walls had ears, they might tell a homeowner some interesting things. Like when water is dripping into an attic crawl space, or where an open window is letting hot air escape during winter.
The walls do have ears, thanks to a device that uses a home's electrical wiring as a giant antenna. Sensors developed by researchers at the University of Washington and the Georgia Institute of Technology use residential wiring to transmit information to and from almost anywhere in the home, allowing for wireless sensors that run for decades on a single watch battery. The technology, which could be used in home automation or medical monitoring, will be presented this month at the Ubiquitous Computing conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Low-cost sensors recording a building's temperature, humidity, light level or air quality are central to the concept of a smart, energy-efficient home that automatically adapts to its surroundings. But that concept has yet to become a reality.
"When you look at home sensing, and home automation in general, it hasn't really taken off," said principal investigator Shwetak Patel, a UW assistant professor of computer science and and of electrical engineering. "Existing technology is still power hungry, and not as easy to deploy as you would want it to be."
That's largely because today's wireless devices either transmit a signal only several feet, Patel said, or consume so much energy they need frequent battery replacements.
"Here, we can imagine this having an out-of-the-box experience where the device already has a battery in it, and it's ready to go and run for many years," Patel said. Users could easily sprinkle dozens of sensors throughout the home, even behind walls or in hard-to-reach places like attics or crawl spaces.
Patel's team has devised a way to use copper electrical wiring as a giant antenna to receive wireless signals at a set frequency. A low-power sensor placed within 10 to 15 feet of electrical wiring can use the antenna to send data to a single base station plugged in anywhere in the home.
The device is called Sensor Nodes Utilizing Powerline Infrastructure, or SNUPI. It originated when Patel and co-author Erich Stuntebeck were doctoral students at Georgia Tech and worked with thesis adviser Gregory Abowd to develop a method using electrical wiring to receive wireless signals in a home. They discovered that home wiring is a remarkably efficient antenna at 27 megahertz. Since then, Patel's team at the UW has built the actual sensors and refined this method. Other co-authors are UW's Gabe Cohn, Jagdish Pandey and Brian Otis.
Cohn, a UW doctoral student in electrical engineering, was lead student researcher and tested the system. In a 3,000-square-foot house he tried five locations in each room and found that only 5 percent of the house was out of the system's range, compared to 23 percent when using over-the-air communication at the same power level. Cohn also discovered some surprising twists – that the sensors can transmit near bathtubs because the electrical grounding wire is typically tied to the copper plumbing pipes, that a lamp cord plugged into an outlet acts as part of the antenna, and that outdoor wiring can extend the sensors' range outside the home.
While traditional wireless systems have trouble sending signals through walls, this system actually does better around walls that contain electrical wiring.
Most significantly, SNUPI uses less than 1 percent of the power for data transmission compared to the next most efficient model.
"Existing nodes consumed the vast majority of their power, more than 90 percent, in wireless communication," Cohn said. "We've flipped that. Most of our power is consumed in the computation, because we made the power for wireless communication almost negligible."
The existing prototype uses UW-built custom electronics and consumes less than 1 milliwatt of power when transmitting, with less than 10 percent of that devoted to communication. Depending on the attached sensor, the device could run continuously for 50 years, much longer than the decade-long shelf life of its battery.
"Basically, the battery will start to decompose before it runs out of power," Patel said.
Longer-term applications might consider using more costly medical-grade batteries, which have a longer shelf life. The team is also looking to reduce the power consumption even further so no battery would be needed. They say they're already near the point where solar energy or body motion could provide enough energy.
The researchers are commercializing the base technology, which they believe could be used as a platform for a variety of sensing systems.
Another potential application is in health care. Medical monitoring needs a compact device that can sense pulse, blood pressure or other properties and beam the information back to a central database, without requiring patients to replace the batteries.
The technology does not interfere with electricity flow or with other emerging systems that use electrical wiring to transmit Ethernet signals between devices plugged into two outlets.
INFORMATION:
For more information, contact Patel at 206-543-3451 or shwetak@cs.washington.edu. More information on the SNUPI project is at http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/wiki/SNUPI.
Patel's group is also presenting a system that uses electrical noise to monitor energy use in the home, which is now owned by Belkin International, Inc. through an acquisition earlier this year.
The group also will present a device, powered by water pressure changes, that can use these changes in pressure to monitor water consumption throughout the home from a single point.
All three presentations will be in the Home Infrastructure session Tuesday, Sept. 28 from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Central European time. The conference website is http://www.ubicomp2010.org/
Home's electrical wiring acts as antenna to receive low-power sensor data
2010-09-15
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Robotic catheter could improve treatment of heart condition
2010-09-15
VIDEO:
NC State's Dr. Greg Buckner has developed a robotic catheter that is significantly more maneuverable than existing devices, which could lead to reduced operating times for patients undergoing heart surgery...
Click here for more information.
Atrial fibrillation is a heart disorder that affects more than two million Americans, and is considered a key contributor to blood clots and stroke. Now researchers from North Carolina State University are developing a new ...
Employee with higher level of emotional intelligence is more dedicated and satisfied at work
2010-09-15
Employees with a high level of emotional intelligence are more dedicated and satisfied at work, compared to other employees. This has been shown in a new study from the University of Haifa. "This study has shown that employees with a higher level of emotional intelligence are assets to their organization. I believe it will not be long before emotional intelligence is incorporated in employee screening and training processes and in employee assessment and promotion decisions" stated Dr. Galit Meisler, who conducted the research.
The study, which Dr. Meisler carried out ...
Gene network reveals link between fats and heart disease signs
2010-09-15
A gene network behind hardening of the arteries and coronary heart disease has been identified by a team of scientists from Australia, Europe and the United Kingdom. Their findings expose potential targets for the treatment of heart disease.
Dr Michael Inouye, a postdoctoral fellow at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, began the study at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK and completed it earlier this year at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Researchers from Finland's National Institute for Health and Welfare, the University of ...
Study into the booby traps of breastfeeding in the UK
2010-09-15
Australian researchers are embarking on a study of mums in the United Kingdom to discover if "guilt-tripping women" into breastfeeding is effective in persuading them to opt for breast over bottle.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a recognised leader in breastfeeding research and has already undertaken a study in Australia and the US.
Lead researcher Joy Parkinson, from QUT's School of Advertising Marketing and Public Relations, said women were often made to feel guilty for not breastfeeding their children when in fact a more supportive approach might be ...
Eating broccoli could guard against arthritis
2010-09-15
Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are launching a groundbreaking new project to investigate the benefits of broccoli in the fight against osteoarthritis.
Initial laboratory research at UEA has found that a compound in broccoli called sulforaphane blocks the enzymes that cause joint destruction in osteoarthritis – the most common form of arthritis.
Broccoli has previously been associated with reduced cancer risk but this is the first major study into its effects on joint health.
With funding from both Arthritis Research UK and the Diet and Health ...
Urgent steps needed to tackle inadequate support for women with secondary breast cancer
2010-09-15
The support provided for women with secondary breast cancer is inadequate and urgent steps are needed to provide better services for patients with this progressive incurable disease, which kills half a million women worldwide every year. Those are the key recommendations to emerge from a trio of papers in the September issue of the European Journal of Cancer Care.
Fifty-seven per cent of breast care nurses who took part in a UK survey for Breast Cancer Care told researchers that they felt there was inadequate provision for women whose cancer has spread to other organs, ...
Overprotective parents may impact heart anxiety in adults with congenital heart conditions
2010-09-15
Adults with congenital heart disease are more likely to suffer heart-focused anxiety – a fear of heart-related symptoms and sensations – if their parents were overprotective during their childhood and adolescence. Dr. Lephuong Ong from Orion Health Services in Vancouver, and colleagues from University Health Network and York University in Toronto, Canada, suggest that health care professionals could encourage greater independence for adolescents and adults with congenital heart disease to improve their psychosocial adjustment. Dr. Ong's work1 is published online in Springer's ...
Interfering with a double-edged sword: novel anti-inflammatory functions for interferons
2010-09-15
Animals react to infections in a number of ways. Among the first is the production of cell factors such as interferons and IL-1beta. Interferons have several functions, including activating a series of intracellular signals such as Tyk2 (Tyrosine kinase 2), while IL-1beta is important for the induction of inflammation, which helps directly to protect the body against attack. However, inflammation must be kept tightly in check as it may also harm the body. Cells control IL-1beta activity in a number of ways, regulating not only the amount of messenger RNA (mRNA) that encodes ...
Fuzzy thinking could spot heart disease risk
2010-09-15
A new approach to evaluating a person's risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, high blood pressure, or heart failure is reported this month in the International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management. The technique uses fuzzy logic to teach a neural network computer program to analyze patient data and spot correlations that can be translated into a risk factor for an individual.
Khanna Nehemiah of the Anna University Chennai, India, and colleagues have developed a medical diagnostic system for predicting the severity of cardiovascular disease based on combining ...
Synthetic fuels research aims to reduce oil dependence
2010-09-15
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers at Purdue University have developed a facility aimed at learning precisely how coal and biomass are broken down in reactors called gasifiers as part of a project to strengthen the scientific foundations of the synthetic fuel economy.
"A major focus is to be able to produce a significant quantity of synthetic fuel for the U.S. air transportation system and to reduce our dependence on petroleum oil for transportation," said Jay Gore, the Reilly University Chair Professor of Combustion Engineering at Purdue.
The research is part of work ...