Abstract
Advanced communications, sensors and controls play an important role in reducing the energy consumption of smart buildings. Wireless sensors have been recently deployed in buildings to provide monitoring and control of several devices such as heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) and lighting systems. In this paper, we present a low-power bandwidth-efficient communication scheme that can be driven by energy harvesting in self-powered wireless sensors. The proposed communication scheme is based on Gold code-phase-shift keying (CPSK) spread-spectrum signaling that improves both transmitter range and power consumption. We present our efforts toward exploring the design, implementation, and performance evaluation of a hardware prototypic Gold CPSK spread-spectrum radio transceiver. Experimental testing in addition to end-to-end system-level simulation-based studies are conducted to evaluate the performance of the Gold CPSK transceiver in terms of receiver sensitivity, coverage range, average probability of bit-error over standard Gaussian and Rayleigh fading-type channels, and multiple access capabilities. The specific engineering tradeoffs are also discussed.
