Intelligent Home-Appliance Recognition over IoT Cloud Network

Chen, 2 Chin-Feng Lai, Member, IEEE, 1 Yueh-Min Huang, Fellow, BCS and 3 Yu-Lin Jeng Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. Institute of Computer Science and Information Engineering and Department of Electronic Engineering, National Ilan University, I-Lan, Taiwan. 3 Cloud System Software Institute, Institute for Information Industry, Taiwan, R.O.C. Email: n98014045@mail.ncku.edu.tw, cinfon@ieee.org, huang@mail.ncku.edu.tw, jackjeng@iii.org.tw
1

1 Shih-Yeh

AbstractIn recent years, under the concern of energy crisis, the government has actively cooperated with research institutions in developing smart meters. As the Internet of Things (IoT) and home energy management system become popular topics, electronic appliance recognition technology can help users identifying the electronic appliances being used, and further improving power usage habits. However, according to the power usage habits of home users, it is possible to simultaneously switch on and off electronic appliances. Therefore, this study discusses electronic appliance recognition in a parallel state, i.e. recognition of electronic appliances switched on and off simultaneously. This study also proposes a non-invasive smart meter system that considers the power usage habits of users unfamiliar with electronic appliances, which only requires inserting a smart meter into the electronic loop. Meanwhile, this study solves the problem of large data volume of the current electronic appliance recognition system by building a database mechanism, electronic appliance recognition classication, and waveform recognition. In comparison to other electronic appliance recognition systems, this study uses a low order embedded system chip to provide low power consumption, which have high expandability and convenience. Differing from previous studies, the experiment of this study considers electronic appliance recognition and the power usage habits of general users. The experimental results showed that the total recognition rate of a single electronic appliance can reach 96.14%, thus proving the feasibility of the proposed system. Index TermsParallel electronic appliance recognition, Smart meter, Waveform recognition algorithm.

I. I NTRODUCTION N recent years, as cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) develop, the development of the smart home apparently enters a new stage, thus, the industries and academia of various countries have focused on developing Smart Grids, Cloud Computing Services, and Green Buildings. As the energy crisis and global warming problems are continuously proposed, the topic of energy crisis has become an urgent international problem to be solved. Appliance recognition utilizes the different current and voltage characteristics in order to recognize different appliances. This method not only effectively manages the appliances in their usage states but also achieve energy management and smart home functions. Further step combines cloud and smart grid to implement whole area electronic distribution and

advanced energy planning. Appliance recognition still faces numerous challenges. Appliance recognition focuses on smart meters to perform power feature calculations, however there are still installation problems. Also most only offers power consumed, power bill, basic power limit, wave detection data printing. Other than that the appliance recognition researches can only recognize one appliance at one time. Those do not target the appliance behaviors of families, simultaneous appliance turning on or off. It also has the negative of building a large vault of power features. How to build samples and decrease calculation to implement this in an embedded environment becomes the main issue this research will face. This researches focuses on parallel state appliance recognition. Therefore appliance on/off state recognition. Using the power meter from this research to get current information to build power feature database then lower the calculation rate as much as possible. Then using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) to power appliance classication to perform the related wave data analysis for recognition. The household appliance conguration state can be provided by the cloud service provider in the future, thus further developing and providing more advanced energy control and management service, which change will not inuence the power usage habit of users. The results shown under simultaneous singular recognition rates can reach up to 96.14%. The contributions of this study can be concluded as follows: 1) Development and design of smart meter 2) Implementation of lightweight electronic appliance recognition algorithm 3) Parallel electronic appliance recognition

II. R ELATED W ORK A. Home-appliance Recognition with Smart Meters The smart meter is the last layer of a smart grid, which provides users with more detailed power usage information by the automation of the electronic meter and provides automatic meter reading service. At present, smart meter studies follow two directions. The rst one is power line design, where the present no-fuse switch general meter used by home users can

978-1-4673-2480-9/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

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bear a 50A current supply. This type of design aims at a high power bus, and thus, should be tested by a high-order meter. Another direction is an extension line design, which design is also known as the smart socket. Its purposes are: 1) to provide an extension line household appliance control service, including relay control and infrared remote control; 2) to reduce the current sensing range to provide a more complete and safer energy information system; 3) seamless integration with the environment, as a power line meter is difcult to be installed, expandability is worse. Akbar et al. [1] used Fast Fourier Transform to transform the current waveform of time domain into a frequency domain in order to obtain special electronic energy parameters for recognition. However, using electronic appliance characteristics for recognition has a defect; if electronic energy information is not obtained from the socket of the individual electronic appliance, but from the general supply, it is difcult to recognize electronic appliances. Obtaining electronic appliance characteristics from individual socket is difcult for use by common families due to its difcult installation. As this type of information is easily obtained, it is applicable to systems with lightweight operational capability or electronic meters, and is one of the basic sorting parameters used in this study. B. Smart Grid The smart grid is introduced into Internet and Communication Technology (ICT) to achieve the monitoring, protection, and automation control. It covers the power companies, power distribution stations, power grid distribution system, electricity and household electricity. Smart grid domain can be discussed in three stages[2]. 1) constructing an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) in urban areas, including energy production, management, and transportation systems construction; 2) providing Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) between the distributing substation and use locations to replace manual meter reading, which can result in human error and greater cost; 3) integrating the Smart Home control with energy issues through smart meter technology to provide real-time home energy use and household appliance control service for general home users. Most studies tend to smart meters, meter management systems, network systems, data security, and electricity storage device. Marcelo Saguan et al. [3] presents that smart grid will eventually establish an energy system which combined new tools and technologies of power generation, transmission and distribution, as well as the clients home appliances and electrical equipment. For large amounts of data exchange in smart grid, in-network processing [4-7] focus on dispersion and parallel processing and load-balancing issues. Traditional distributed computing systems can be categorized into two types: the Parallel and Distributed systems. Both types of systems, in the spirit of task simplication, divide the original problem for computing into multiple sections to be processed by multiple processors or computers. To the parallel system [8,9], different processors share common memory blocks and data. However, the implementation relationships between multiple processors should be governed and controlled by multiple implementation method.

III. OVERALL ARCHITECTURE In this section, the work describe our proposed solution.

A. Smart Meter/Socket Design This study implements a smart meter with a parallel electronic appliance recognition function. Its system structure, as shown in Fig. 1, is consisted of a hardware layer, a data process layer, and a recognition layer. The smart home and smart grid domains are covered by the application derived from this meter system.

Application

Smart Home

Smart Grid

Recognition

Appliance Recognition

Sub-tree Classifier

Database Creation

Data Process

Waveform Interception

Slide Windows

Noise Suppression

Hardware

Square wave Generator

Current Sensor

Clamp Circuit

Amplifier

Fig. 1.

Proposed System Architecture

Hardware Layer The hardware layer is the hardware design layer of a smart meter, which is in charge of processing electronic energy signals, including complete electronic energy signal waveform extraction, waveform correction and regulation. It provides the data process layer with preliminary primary voltage and current signal. The principle and implementation of this stage are introduced in detail in later section. Data Process Layer The data process layer is the advanced data processing part inside the STM32, and includes internal current waveform extraction, noise reduction, and state detection. It is in charge of providing electronic appliance characteristic processing for electronic appliance recognition algorithm, and the data process at this stage can greatly reduce the noise caused by the hardware layer, while increasing the recognition rate and accuracy of the system. Recognition The recognition layer is the core method of this paper, and includes a waveform recognition algorithm, database creation, and segmentation, it is in charge of calculating and classifying the electronic energy characteristics of the data process layer, which uses fewer characteristic groups for hierarchical characteristic classication and removes very different characteristics out of the database matrix, thus, providing a better recognition database for the core waveform recognition algorithm to reduce the time complexity of recognition calculation.

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IV. E LECTRONIC E NERGY DATA P ROCESSING F RAMEWORK In order to accurately capture the waveform of a surge current and avoid different power frequencies under energy policies of different countries, this study uses a transformer to normalize the waveform extraction. The EXTI interface of the STM32 system chip is used for initialization, where the interrupt trigger point is set as EXTI Trigger Rising, and the priority of this interrupt trigger point is maximized to avoid other interrupts inuencing the operation. As shown in Fig. 2, the voltage is the initial waveform of external voltage after passing through the transformer, and the square wave generator generates a set of continuous square wave signals. Finally, the external interrupt captures the rising edge part of the square wave as the trigger point. The system stores the complete surge current waveform in the sequence window when the external interrupt is triggered, and waits for the next external interrupt trigger.
4 2

are two nite data sets in a p-dimensional Euclidean space, A = {a1 , a2 , . . . , an } Rp and B = {b1 , b2 , . . . , bn } Rp , the equation of Euclidean distance is dened as follow. dist(A, B ) = [(a1 b1 )2 +(a2 b2 )2 + ... +(an bn )2 ]1/2 (1) As the Euclidean distance has not processed the time axis, there will be system recognition error as a result of displacement and noise, which renders it inapplicable to accurate electronic appliance recognition. 2) Dynamic Time Warping: The waveform recognition algorithm used in this study is Dynamic Time Correction or Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), which algorithm a common algorithm for discussing the similarities between two time dependent series, and as the characteristic of dynamic programming (DP) is usually used in speech recognition, the characteristic of speech recognition is the scaling of time axis, and the DTW can compare the waveform similarity between two sets in different matrix lengths, as shown in Fig. 3.

Voltage

0 -2 -4

3.5

Square wave Generator

1.5

-0.5

3.5

External interrupt

1.5 -0.5

Fig. 2.

The Schematic of Interrupt Trigger Point

Fig. 3.

The Telescopic Features of DTW

Waveform extraction is discussed in the chapter of electronic energy extraction, in order to achieve real-time electronic energy information acquisition and to improve the recognition rate. The signal processing aims at electronic appliance state detection and noise processing, thus, two mechanisms are designed in the signal processing layer, which are state detection and noise reduction. A. Waveform Recognition Algorithm The electronic appliance recognition algorithm used in this study is a waveform recognition algorithm, which is used for recognizing the variations and similarities of waveforms or patterns, which is the commonly used method of Distance Measure, and is mostly applied to electrocardiography (ECG), speech recognition, and pattern recognition domains. This study uses a waveform recognition algorithm to analyze instantaneous value of a current, where the major difference between the current and the aforesaid speech recognition is spatial compression. This study discusses this type of problem in the following section. 1) Euclidean Distance: The Euclidean distance is the most fundamental part of distance measurement, as well as the basis of implementation of multiple distance algorithms, the discussed information is the range difference between two sets in Euclidean space as the basis of measurement. If there

If two sets Q = {q1 , q2 , ..., qn1 , qn } and U = {u1 , u2 , ..., um1 , um } are given, a n m distance matrix D is created, where the matrix D(i, j ) is the distance between qi and uj , i.e. all D(i, j ) = d(qi , uj ), and the warping path (W) in matrix D represents the coincidence relation between Q and U, as dened by Eq. 2. W = {w1 , w2 , ..., wk }, max(m, n) K < m + n 1 (2) The limits to warping path are as listed below: Boundary conditions: w1 = (1, 1) and wk = (m, n), i.e. the start and end of warping path are a clinodiagonal path. Continuity: if wk = (a, b), wk1 = (a , b ) meets a a 1 and b b 1, i.e. the available direction of warping path must be the adjacent matrix, including adjacent bevel matrix. Monotonicity: if wk = (a, b), wk1 = (a , b ) meets a a 0 and b b 0, i.e. this warping path must go in the single direction of the time series. As shown in Fig. 4, the left waveform (Sample Data) is the sampled electronic energy information, and the lower waveform is the electronic lamp sample in comparison database, as the two path matrices match each other completely, it is warped to a bevel linear path.

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analysis in the experimental process. The above mentioned electronic appliances will pass through the learning phase to complete the extraction and correction of electronic appliance waveform information; meanwhile, this step contains the waveform reforming mechanism, thus, facilitating the rapid creation of the recognition database. Taking this experiment as an example, 96 comparison data can be created, providing that the 8 groups of information are learned. A. Performance Metrics In order to test the accuracy of the electronic appliance recognition system, as proposed in this study, in the parallel electronic appliance environment, this chapter analyzes the combination of all electronic appliance states. In order to simulate the simultaneous on-off of electronic appliances, this study uses a multihole extension line, available on the market, as assistance, where electronic appliances can be simultaneously switched on by using the switch for the multihole extension line. The correctness evaluation method of data mining is used for data verication in this study.For the binary classication problem, if the presently tested recognition sample is electronic appliance a, the results can be divided into four series: True Positive (TP): The measured electronic appliance is electronic appliance a, and identied as electronic appliance a. False Negative (FN): The measured electronic appliance is electronic appliance a, but identied as another electronic appliance. False Positive (FP): The measured electronic appliance is another electronic appliance, but identied as electronic appliance a. True Negative (TN): It is another electronic appliance in fact, and identied as another electronic appliance. The precision (p) and recall (r) of this recognition system can be determined by the aforesaid four states. The precision means taking the information of real electronic appliance a out of the set of all the types identied as electronic appliance a, higher precision means lower misrecognition rate. p = TPTP + FP) (4)

Fig. 4.

The Distance Schematic of DTW Lamp Identication

The DTW length is dened as the minimum warping cost of a slant path, as shown in Eq. 3.
K

DT W (Q, U ) = min
k=1

wk /2)

(3)

The time complexity for calculating DTW distance is about O(mn), namely, the time complexity of equidistant DTW calculation is O(n2 ); therefore, many studies have optimized this algorithm, and the Path Constraints [10-12] can reduce the time complexity to O(n) by limiting the warped boundary in matrix D. Another method is local path constraint [13-15], where the warp angle in matrix D is limited to 27 45 63 . This method supports a jumping processing, which provides better path calculation instead of counting the noise in the total DTW distance, the optimal path of DTW distance will go 27 and 63, as possible, in order to obtain a shorter distance, with the fundamental purpose reducing the calculation load while limiting the reasonable image path. V. S YSTEM P ROTOTYPE
AND

V ERIFICATION

This study uses the following ve electronic appliances as the analytic data set, as shown in Table 1, including a circulation fan, a notebook computer, an LCD screen, a table lamp, and a hot melt gun.
TABLE I T HE LIST OF E LECTRICAL E XPERIMENT Data Type Fan Notebook LCD Monitor Bulb Hot-melt gun Column Close Close Close Close Close Weak Power saving Open Open Open Medium High performance N/A N/A N/A Strong N/A N/A N/A N/A

The recall represents the ratio of samples of actual electronic appliance a identied as electronic appliance a, as dened as Eq. 5.2, this study uses recall as the basis of recognition rate in the sample space. r = T PT P + FN) B. Test Cases In the test for parallel electronic appliance recognition, this study randomly extracts different electronic appliance combinations and uses the electronic appliance recognition algorithm adopted in this study to identify the electronic appliances. According to the analysis of the state of the notebook computer, the low power consumption notebook computer, as learned at the electronic appliance learning stage, is the (5)

The noise reduction and parallel electronic appliance recognition mechanisms, as stated in previous chapter, are used for

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120 100 80

Precision & Recall

pre recall

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This study is conducted under the Cloud computing systems and software development project(2/3) of the Institute for Information Industry which is subsidized by the Ministry of Economy Affairs of the Republic of China and the National Science Council of the Republic of China, Taiwan for supporting this research under Contract NSC 101-2628-E-197-001MY3, 101-2221-E-197-008-MY3 and 101-2219-E-197-004. R EFERENCES

(%)

60 40 20 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Test Pattern
Fig. 5. The Precision and Recall of combination of Two Electrical

low power consumption mode of an operating system not executing any program, and it is in low power consumption mode of executing multiple software synchronously at the recognition stage. As the video adapter embedded in the notebook computer automatically switches the video adapter mode, the efciency of the notebook computer is increased to approximately high efciency mode. In order to validate the causes for this case, the difference between two current waveforms is analyzed according to the measurement result of the current sensor. It is observed the current waveform approaches high efciency when the low efciency notebook computer executes massive calculations; meanwhile, the high efciency mode approaches to low efciency mode because of different quantities of started services. Therefore, it is misrecognized as a notebook computer high efciency mode in this experimental result.

VI. S UMMARY This study proposes a smart meter design based on an extension of line smart meter design in order to provide a simpler installation mode, with convenience and expandability, for home users. In addition, this study proposes a lightweight electronic appliance recognition method for the designed smart meter. The average recognition rate of a single electronic appliance can reach 96.14%, where the parallel electronic appliance recognition is carried out without presetting any power usage conditions, and the recognition rate can be higher than 84.14%, thus, validating the feasibility of a lightweight electronic appliance recognition system to lower the computing capacity of an embedded system. The parallel electronic appliance recognition system proposed in this study aims at the training part, which is usually neglected in electronic appliance recognition. This study also proposes a current waveform merging mechanism to provide the rapid creation of a recognition sample database. Finally, the subtree classication mechanism is used to cut the database parent tree into several cluster subtrees, thus, obtaining the computing time of a recognition algorithm and its spatial balance point.

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