Wireless building control system bridge

• US 7,986,701 B2
• Filed: 06/13/2008
• Issued: 07/26/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/13/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: Guntipalli, Giri Babu, He, Jingyu, Kore, Vinayak Sadashiv, Honnappa, Arun
• Primary Examiner(s): Sheikh; Ayaz R
• Assistant Examiner(s): Hsiung; Hai-Chang
• Application Number:
  US12/139,148
• Publication Number:
  US 20090312853A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,138 Days
• Field of Search: 370/401
• US Class Current: 370/401
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/4185 characterised by the network communication

Abstract

A building control system is described that includes a building controller and a bridge. The building controller may control one or more portions of a building control system and may communicate with the bridge over a wired network. The bridge may be coupled to the building controller and may be configured to communicate with other remotely located building controllers via a wireless network. The bridge may provide a link between the wired communication of the local building controller and the wireless communication of the remotely located building controllers. The bridge may include a cache memory for storing data received from remotely located building controllers. In some cases, the data stored in the cache memory may be requested and received in advance of the data being requested by the local building controller.

Claims

1. A building control system, comprising:

a bridge having a first port for communicating over a wired network using a wired network communications protocol and a second port for communicating over a wireless network using a wireless network communications protocol;

a building controller configured to control one or more portions of the building control system, the building controller coupled to the first port of the bridge via a wired network and configured to request data from the bridge using the wired network communications protocol;

wherein the bridge is configured to receive data from one or more remotely located building controllers via the wireless network, and for storing the data in a cache memory, the bridge is further configured to provide requested data to the building controller via the wired network upon receiving a request from the building controller; and

wherein the bridge is configured to monitor a history of requests received from the building controller, and to learn an expected next request time, so that the bridge can update the cache memory prior to receiving a subsequent request from the building controller.

2. The building control system of claim 1, wherein the bridge is configured to request data from one or more of the remotely located building controllers and store the data in the cache memory before receiving a request from the building controller for the data.

3. The building control system of claim 2 wherein the bridge responds to the request for the data from the building controller with the requested data if the requested data is already stored in the cache memory.

4. The building control system of claim 3 wherein the bridge transmits the request from the building controller to one or more remotely located building controllers over the wireless network if the requested data is not already stored in the cache memory.

5. The building control system of claim 2 wherein the bridge is configured to receive periodic updates of data from one or more remotely located building controllers and the bridge stores the updated data in the cache memory.

6. The building control system of claim 1 wherein the bridge only stores the updated data if the data has changed by a threshold amount.

7. The building control system of claim 1 wherein the bridge and building controller are integrated forming a wireless building controller.

8. The building control system of claim 1 wherein the bridge is configured to receive requests from one or more wired building controllers via the wired network.

9. The building control system of claim 8, wherein the bridge is configured to request data from one or more of the wired building controllers and store the data in the cache memory before receiving a request from the building controller for the data.

10. The building control system of claim 9 wherein the bridge responds to the request for the data from the building controller with the requested data if the requested data is already stored in the cache memory.

11. The building control system of claim 10 wherein the bridge is configured to receive periodic updates of data from one or more wired building controllers and the bridge stores the updated data in the cache memory.

12. A bridge configured to be coupled to a building controller, the bridge comprising:

a wired communication protocol task, wherein the wired communication protocol task can transmit and/or receive messages to/from a building controller;

a wireless communication protocol task, wherein the wireless communication protocol can transmit and/or receive messages over a wireless network;

a tunneling task that is configured to convert messages from the wired communication protocol to the wireless communication protocol and from the wireless communication protocol to the wired communication protocol;

a cache memory that is configured to store data received over the wireless network from one or more remotely located building controllers in order to service one or more requests of the building controller; and

a learning task that is configured to monitor a history of requests from the building controller and to determine an expected request time for a next request so that the bridge can update the cache memory just prior to receiving a subsequent request from the building controller.

13. The bridge of claim 12 wherein the bridge is a supervisory bridge and the building controller is a supervisory building controller.

14. The bridge of claim 13 wherein the bridge is configured to receive messages including data from the one or more remotely located building controllers via the wireless network and store the data in accordance with the cache memory prior to the building controller requesting the data from the bridge.

15. The bridge of claim 14 wherein the bridge is configured to receive messages from the building controller requesting data from one or more remotely located building controllers and, if the requested data is already stored in accordance with the cache memory, the bridge responds to the building controller with the requested data by accessing the cache memory.

16. The bridge of claim 14 wherein the bridge is configured to receive messages from the building controller requesting data from one or more remotely located building controllers and, if the requested data is not stored in accordance with the cache memory, the bridge transmits the message to the one or more remotely located building controllers via the wireless network.

17. The bridge of claim 14 wherein the bridge is configured to receive messages including data from the one or more remotely located building controllers via the wireless network at a request interval, wherein the request interval is based at least in part on the history of requests made by the building controller.

18. The bridge of claim 14 wherein the bridge is configured to receive messages including data from one or more wired building controllers, the bridge is configured to monitor the one or more wired building controllers for changes in data.

19. The bridge of claim 12 wherein the bridge is a source bridge.

20. The bridge of claim 19 wherein the bridge is configured to periodically request data from the building controller.

21. The bridge of claim 20 wherein the bridge transmits the data over the wireless network at a request interval.

22. The bridge of claim 21 wherein the bridge compares currently requested data to previously requested data, and if the data has not changed by a threshold amount, the bridge does not transmit the data across the wireless network.

23. A building control system, comprising:

a supervisory controller configured to control one or more portions of a building control system, wherein the supervisory controller is configured to communicate using a wired communication protocol;

a supervisory bridge coupled to the supervisory controller via a wired network and configured to communicate with the supervisory controller via a wired communication protocol;

the supervisory bridge further configured to convert the wired communication protocol to a wireless communication protocol for wireless communication;

a remotely located building controller configured to communicate using a wired communication protocol;

a source bridge connected to the remotely located building controller via a wired network and configured to communicate with the remotely located building controller via a wired communication protocol;

the source bridge further configured to communicate with the supervisory bridge using the wireless communication protocol;

wherein the supervisory bridge includes a cache memory for storing data relating to the remotely located building controller received from the source bridge; and

the supervisory bridge and/or the source bridge configured to transmit data to the cache memory of the supervisory bridge before the supervisory controller requests the data, wherein the source bridge transmits updated data to the supervisory bridge at an interval that is learned based at least in part on a history of requests made by the supervisory controller.

24. The building control system of claim 23 wherein the source bridges only transmits the update data if the data has changed by a threshold amount.

25. The building control system of claim 23 wherein the supervisory bridge responds to at least some of the requests by the supervisory controller with the data stored in the cache memory of the supervisory bridge.

26. A bridge configured to be coupled to a building controller, the bridge comprising:

a wired communication protocol task, wherein the wired communication protocol task can transmit and/or receive messages from a building controller;

a wireless communication protocol task, wherein the wireless communication protocol can transmit and/or receive messages over a wireless network;

a tunneling task that is configured to convert messages from the wired communication protocol to the wireless communication protocol and from the wireless communication protocol to the wired communication protocol;

wherein the tunneling task includes a cache memory that is configured to store data received from the building controller; and

wherein the bridge is configured to automatically request data from the building controller and transmit the requested data over the wireless network at intervals that are based, at least in part, on a history of requests for the requested data.

27. The bridge of claim 26 wherein the bridge compares currently requested data to previously requested data, and if the data has not changed by a threshold amount, the bridge does not transmit the data across the wireless network.

28. The bridge of claim 26 wherein the bridge is configured to receive messages including data from the building controller via the wired network and store the data in accordance with the cache memory prior to receiving a request from remotely located building controller over the wireless network.

29. The bridge of claim 28 wherein the messages including data from the building controller includes all the parameters of the building controller.

30. A building controller, comprising:

a first port for communicating over a wired network using a wired network communications protocol,

a second port for communicating over a wireless network using a wireless network communications protocol, wherein the second port is configured to receive data from one or more remotely located building controllers via the wireless network;

a tunneling task block connected to the first port and to the second port, the tunneling task block configured to convert the wired network communication protocol to wireless network communication protocol and wireless network communication protocol to wired network communication protocol, the tunneling task block including a cache memory for storing data;

a controller block configured to control one or more portions of the building control system, the controller block coupled to the first port and configured to request data from the tunneling task block using the wired network communications protocol and/or to send data to the tunneling task block in response to a request from the tunneling task block for data using the wired network communications protocol;

wherein the tunneling task block is further configured to provide requested data to the controller block upon receiving a request from the controller block and/or store requested data in the cache memory upon receiving a response from the controller block; and

wherein the tunneling task block includes a learning mechanism that is configured to monitor the received requests from the controller block and learn an expected request interval for the receiving the request from the controller block based on the history of the requests.