Smart buildings have become more prominent in the commercial real estate industry and that prominence is expected to continue to grow, according to FortuneBusinessInsights.com. The smart building market is forecasted to increase from $80.62 billion where it was in 2022, to $328.62 billion by 2029. The projection shows that making buildings “smart” is more than a fad, Microwaves & RF reports. Rather, smart buildings can deliver CRE owners operational and financial benefits as well as data that can lead to decreased heating costs, optimize building ventilation and HVAC, manage lighting and improve a building’s overall energy efficiency.
Additionally, smart buildings don’t require as much maintenance, reducing costs and allowing them to better optimize space, which makes tenants more comfortable and as a result, more productive.
Creating smart buildings doesn’t have to be overly expensive
Cost is one of the biggest concerns CRE owners have when it comes to deploying new systems in their buildings. The cost of cabling to connect to sensors and subsystems is a key area of financial concern for installing smart systems, but it doesn’t have be as costly as building owners might think, according to Microwaves & RF. That’s because wireless Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud technology have become advanced to the point where property owners can manage their buildings without cables. Data can be sent wirelessly to the cloud or a building management system, eliminating the need to re-cable a building.
For example, Nrlyze, a company that focuses on optimizing energy systems to reduce energy waste in the real-estate sector, used the self-governing and flexible NeoMesh network technology from NeoCortec to make its Copenhagen office building smart sans wires. The company leveraged its wireless network to deploy a large sensor infrastructure quickly and cost effectively.
Benefits of wireless mesh technology
Using wireless mesh tech to create a smart building can be cost effective — especially for pre-existing buildings, Microwaves & RF reports. That’s because in older buildings it can be difficult to get the current wiring that’s behind walls to the smart systems inside the rooms and make that connection to the new intelligent sensors and devices.
As for buildings without wires, it’s difficult to power devices as well as get data in and out of them. A mesh wireless solution like NeoMesh however is designed to work around obstacles. The solution’s flexibility also makes it so CRE owners only need a single central gateway to gather all of the sensor data and send it to the cloud. Repeater and additional gateways to connect various network parts aren’t necessary.
Additionally, NeoMesh network technology can address issues such as power consumption, network size and management and data transport reliability unlike its predecessors like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The technology was designed to fit the new wireless world, smart buildings’ low-power sensor networks and other IoT apps. Individual nodes in a network remain inactive until they’re needed. This ensures that all nodes are energy efficient and an entire network can be low power and run on batteries.
Smart networks are secure networks
CRE owners want their wireless networks to not only be cost effective, but secure. NeoMesh meets the high security standards building owners demand, according to Microwaves & RF. The high level of security is ensured through ACK/NACK, AES128 encryption, CRC32 handshake, and Challenge/Response authentication between source and destination. Additionally, NeoMesh allows building owners to upgrade gradually if they prefer. An incremental setup helps lower the initial investment as the CRE owner only pays for what they need at a given time.
