Universal BACnet Interface Gateway

Abstract

Building Automation is widely used to control and monitor the status of building. This involves Building Management Systems (BMS) including networks, Direct Digital Controls (DDC) and protocols to communicate. BACnet is well known open-standard protocol in building automation industry, specifically developed by American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). BACnet is an American national standard, a European standard, a national standard in more than 30 countries, and an ISO global standard. Nowadays BACnet is supported by most of the Building Management Systems and device and equipments manufactures. Even though most of device manufactures supports BACnet standards, there are number of other proprietary protocol standards are available in market. To communicate with those devices which come with proprietary protocol it is require to developed interfaces for BMS systems. In that case if customer requires switch to another BMS system the interface should be re written. The Universal BACnet Interface Gateway (UBIG), allows to communicate with any non-BACnet subsystems and represent those data as BACnet object. Any Building Management System which supports BACnet standards can communicate via UBIG to control and monitor these sub systems. This provides the flexibility to migrate to any different BMS system without having to develop the interface for each subsystem. Also, nowadays the expectations from the BMS is higher, thus there is necessity to integrate other external systems such as DataBases, Web Servers, etc. with BMS to provide sophisticated solutions for building facility management. Such a centralized system would provide many advantages, mainly in maintenance and usability. UBIG is having that capability to connect any other system and publish those data as BACnet objects.