ATLANTA - Advances related to the BACnet standard, including recommending public review for an addendum that would tunnel BACnet over ZigBee wireless networks, were made during the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Winter Meeting.

Proposed Addendum q would lead to a significant reduction in the cost of installation at the sensor and controller level by reducing the amount of wired networking required in a building automation system, according to Jerry Martocci, convener of the BACnet committee’s Wireless Networking working group.

“Marrying these two technologies seemed obvious,” said Martocci. “BACnet already had the object and services model designed specifically for building automation but no wireless network, and ZigBee had the wireless capabilities but no object model for building automation. We just had to put the two together to benefit from the synergies.”

The addendum recommendation began about two years ago with meetings between BACnet and ZigBee experts. “During this time we learned about ZigBee’s data communications, and they learned about BACnet’s networking and objects and services model,” said BACnet chairman Bill Swan. “Together, we looked at a number of approaches and discussed the pros and cons of each.”

For various technical reasons, battery-operated devices, including sensors, will probably be ZigBee only, but powered controllers would have BACnet/ZigBee capability. Martocci notes that the “mesh” networking among ZigBee nodes leads to self-healing networks, so that even if a link between two nodes is obstructed, the mesh network can route around the obstructed link, leading to reliable networks.

In other developments, the BACnet committee worked toward approval of nine additional addenda during the meeting. “Only a few of these are going out for first public review,” said Swan, “but it is our expectation that these are all likely to pass without significant comments.”

Publication date:02/25/2008