A distributed virtual sensor scheme for smart buildings based on adaptive approximation

This paper presents the design of a methodology for diagnosing sensor faults in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, and compensating their effects on the distributed control architecture. The proposed methodology is developed in a distributed framework, considering a multi-zone HVAC system as a set of interconnected, nonlinear subsystems. For each of the interconnected subsystems, we design a local virtual sensor agent that can detect and isolate faults in its monitored sensors and provide sensor fault estimations for correcting the faulty measurements. Adaptive estimation schemes are implemented in each local virtual sensor agent, using adaptive approximation models for learning the unknown fault function. Simulation results are used for illustrating the effectiveness of the proposed methodology applied to a two-zone HVAC system.