Integrating wireless sensor nodes and smartphones for energy-efficient data exchange in smart environments

To effectively exploit the potential of smart environments, an energy-efficient data exchange between the smart environment infrastructure and its users is necessary. Usually, a major building block of smart environments are different sensors, which typically communicate making use of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Opposed to this, users in a smart environment are nowadays most often equipped with smartphones, which do not support IEEE 802.15.4-based communication, but offer other standards for wireless local communication, like Bluetooth. Consequently, a major challenge in this context is the efficient integration of wireless sensor network and smartphone technology to provide users with smart environment data in a seamless fashion in real-time. To realize the necessary interconnection of sensors deployed in a smart environment and users´ smartphones, different possibilities exist, which can basically be divided in extending sensors to support the communication standards offered by smartphones, or vice versa. We analyze different integration possibilities in this context and realize them prototypically. Based on real-world measurements, we evaluate the energy-efficiency of the different approaches, in particular providing a comprehensive analysis of their energy consumption.