A wireless system for real-time environmental and energy monitoring of a metro station: Lessons learnt from a three-year research project

Optimal energy management of underground transportation systems is widely recognized as a key aspect for significant energy savings at regional level. The three-year long EU funded "Seam4us" research project (2011 to 2014) aims to create a system for optimized integrated energy management, relying on the Passeig de Gracia metro station in Barcelona as the pilot station. One of the outcomes of the project was the installation of a wireless sensor network, in order to track in real time both environmental and energy parameters. The data collected by the network have been exploited to inform an intelligent control system about the state of the station. In fact, a reliable real-time sensing is critical for implementing advanced control policies in any kind of environment. For that reason, this paper will report on the Seam4us findings regarding real-time sensing of that quite harsh domain. The design criteria and constraints that led to the final installation will be argued. Then, post-processing functions, i.e. those algorithms turning raw data into the variables which can be processed by the controller, will be described. Finally, the general performance of the system will be discussed, in terms of reliability of data exchange and energy efficiency.