FEATURE COVER STORY
AUTOMATION FOR COMMERCIAL buildings and domestic dwellings
EBV Elektronik is official product partner of the IP500 Alliance, IP500: The open, secure and multi- vendor platform and actively promotes the standard globally within its EBVchips program. Here’s how the standard is being advanced to offer greater safety measures in connected buildings
I
P500 has established itself as a global wireless standard platform for security
applications in the Internet of Things. Its strong focus on security means manufacturer-independent and affordable wireless communication can be used for commercial building and domestic automation. Automation systems for commercial
buildings and domestic dwellings have been around since the last millennium. Until now though, these have been relatively proprietary systems despite a certain level of standardisation (for example Instabus, Konnex, KNX), and they have been exclusively used within their application niches. The Internet of Things (IoT) has added a new dimension to building and domestic automation to give networking a major boost. As early as 2006 leading manufacturers, users and operators launched the international "IP500 Alliance" initiative (
www.IP500.ORG) whose goal was, to quote its website, “to define, develop and provide a secure and vendor-neutral wireless communication platform for smart buildings". Over the last couple of years more than 30 IP500 members have been working together on the new IP500 platform. Members include Bosch Safety Systems, Dorma, Geze, Honeywell Esser, Siemens Building Technologies, Tyco, Wago and the communication concern Orange. They have worked together with partners such as TÜV Rheinland, Varta Microbattery and EBV Elektronik. This platform should, according to the IP500 website, "meet all the technical requirements for secure, interoperable, and cross-disciplinary networking of smart devices for use in all areas of building automation". What was, and still is
important for all parties: a common solution to ensure maximum interoperability based on existing standards and industry norms such as IEEE 802.15.4, IPv6, 6LowPAN, BACnet, AES128 or IPsec. Two particularly important
10 SEPTEMBER 2015 | ELECTRONICS
An imaginable system hack is a simulation of a fire. But much worse would be a malfunction of a smoke detector not generating an alarm when there really was a fire. This last point must be guaranteed, while the first should be prevented - and this is the basic idea behind IP500. In order to create the required redundancy,
IP500 operates within a mesh-network. A dual-band system is to follow shortly. In addition, there is the usual AES-128 encryption. The IP500 alliance originally concerned itself
aspects of IP500 are safety in the sense of functional safety, and security in the sense of data confidentiality, integrity and authenticity.
“As part of its
EBVchip program, EBV Elektronik has launched the world's first IP500 single band 868MHz
module under the name of Vesta ...”
A COMBINATION OF SAFETY AND SECURITY In close partnership with the VdS, one of the most important aspects implemented by IP500 is that of redundancy for operational safety. Using AES128 encryption with special authentication, the standard provides the necessary safety: The system transmits each piece of data with a constantly changing 8 bit key. This is only part and not the whole key, but it does ensure a different key is transmitted each time. One must also decide which form of safety/security is particularly relevant: safety in the sense of data loss, or security in the sense of data theft/corruption. With smoke detectors etc. it is of paramount importance that data loss does not occur i.e. that a smoke detector always detects smoke. This requires a defined live signal indicating the smoke detector is
active. Secondly it
must be ensured any generated
signals are always reliably delivered. / ELECTRONICS Figure 1:
Home automation on your smart device
with wireless communication for safety- relevant applications in building management. Now it’s also looking at the smart grid and building automation. Typical applications are fire and smoke detectors, the control of the routes to emergency exits, lighting of escape routes, alarm systems and intrusion detectors, light and air conditioning control, messaging and localisation, access control and security locks, as well as special protection in general – in other words, any safety-critical application.
Figure 2:
The IP500 single band 868MHz Vesta module from EBV Elektronik
ASYNCHRONOUS MESH NETWORK In contrast to the usual (IEEE) standardisations, the end equipment manufacturers (i.e. the OEMs) followed a top- down approach to define IP500. They considered the data throughput, safety levels and redundancy needed to fulfil requirements. IP500’s range and energy consumption etc. are also important aspects which require a
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