Automation in Construction 30 (2013) 9–14

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Automation in Construction
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon

Fiber optic and KNX sensors network for remote monitoring a new building
cladding system
R. Unzu a, J.A. Nazabal a, G. Vargas b, c, R.J. Hernández b, c, C. Fernández-Valdivielso a, N. Urriza a,
M. Galarza a, M. Lopez-Amo a,⁎
a
Universidad Publica de Navarra, Spain
b
Alonso, Hernández & Associates Architects, Spain
c
University of the Basque Country, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper shows the utilization of a fiber optic sensor network for monitoring the behavior of the enclosure
Accepted 6 November 2012 of a telecommunication tower. Such enclosure is composed by double monolithic glass panels filled with an
Available online 12 December 2012 alveolar type polycarbonate structure. These fiber optic sensors are also integrated with a fiber optic acceler-
ator and various building automation KNX sensors into a custom developed Building Management System for
Keywords:
remote monitoring the structural health of the building. Results related to the measurements recorded into
Fiber optic sensors
New materials
the glass alveolar panel have been used for assessing the structural reliability of the panel, under thermal
Building Management System and mechanical working conditions.
KNX © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Multiplexing
Structural health monitoring

1. Introduction
Optical sensors based on Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs) [5] have
been widely used in monitoring of civil structures [1,2]. They show
interesting features and advantages such as the possibility of their
wavelength multiplexing using a single fiber optic cable, their reduced
size and lightness, and total immunity to electromagnetic interferences,
among others [3–5]. The measured parameters by the FBG sensors are
codified in the light wavelength. This feature avoids the distortion of
information through the sensor network due to external effects. The
remote measurement of these sensors is also possible using an optical
fiber channel [6] or by a wireless link [2].
Remote Structural Monitoring Methodology (RSM) [7–9] requires
an interdisciplinary approach integrating areas such as materials
engineering, sensor technology, communication technology, statistical
mechanics, and information technology for online data transmission
and damage detection/health assessment of the structure.
RMS has many advantages such as continuous monitoring of
the measured parameters, early alarm of any incipient damage, and
data acquisition even in adverse climatic/environmental conditions.
The aim of this work is to know the performance of the enclosure
materials in real time and under service conditions. Moreover, the
system is intended to prevent severe alterations in the enclosure due
to external agents (temperature changes, wind loads, vibrations…).
The monitored building considered in this work is a telecommunication
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mla@unavarra.es (M. Lopez-Amo).
tower then the use of any metallic elements must be avoided. With the
use of conventional electric sensors, metallic cables can electromag-
netically shield the signal of the antennas, and it can induce electric
currents into the cable, distorting data. This is the main reason why
fiber optic sensors have been used.
In this work, FBG sensors with an optical accelerometer and some
KNX sensors are integrated at the building's enclosures into a custom
system for remote monitoring building structural health. The idea
is to extend the functionalities of an existing commercial Building
Management System (BMS) like KNX, with new capabilities (e.g. the
use of fiber optic sensors and remote monitoring). KNX has been used
because it is a leading building automation technology, with an impor-
tant implantation level in many European countries.
2. Application description
In order to evaluate and quantify the behavior of building elements
under real service conditions by means of FBG sensors, a singular tower
designed by Alonso, Hernández & Associates Architects S.L. was chosen.
Moreover, the building has an innovative enclosure system: double
glass panels filled with polycarbonate core with alveolar structure.
2.1. Telecommunication tower
The chosen tower belongs to the headquarter of TRACASA, a public
company of the Government of Navarra, located in front of the Inno-
vation Center and next to the Eco-city of Sarriguren (Navarra, Spain).
The main building has a built surface of 20.600 m 2 and disposes

0926-5805/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2012.11.005
10 R. Unzu et al. / Automation in Construction 30 (2013) 9–14
advanced technological solutions that allow for an efficient use of the
energy needs of the building, reducing the energetic consumption.
This building has a singular telecommunication tower that contains
the information systems and the communication antennas. Due to this
functional exclusivity of the tower, the construction needed an innova-
tive glass enclosure solution, which is shown in Fig. 1.
2.2. Alveolar sandwich structure
A vertical façade of innovative panels was installed in the tower.
These panels have a sandwich structure, composed by two external
glass skins filled with a central alveolar core. The two cladding glasses
use monolithic glass and the core has an alveolar/lattice structure
(honeycomb configuration) of polycarbonate (see Fig. 1).
The main structural features of the panels are reached by the
adhesive union between the glass claddings and the core, without
the need of any other kind of holder in the perimeter of the panel.
In addition, the sandwich configuration provides outstanding mechanical
properties to strain and compression. Besides, from an aesthetic point
of view there are several new design degrees.
The glass skins provide the panels with a translucent feeling,
whereas the alveolar core allows the use of colored solutions and a
variety of degrees of translucency. The translucency reaches its max-
imum in the perpendicular direction with respect to the panel plane,
and it decreases with increasing angles of observation.
3. Network description and installation
3.1. Network design
In order to monitor the mentioned tower, both commercial strain
and temperature sensors have been installed. Strain sensors offer in-
formation about contraction, dilatation and deformation of the glass
panels, and temperature sensors are necessary to compensate for
the deformation effects on strain sensors due to thermal changes on
the glass.
Moreover, the information provided by the temperature sensors
is required to establish the current temperature of the panels and
it is essential to experimentally determine the coefficient of thermal
Fig. 1. Panel structure.
expansion (CTE) of the glass. As the glass alveolar panels have a
sandwiched structure, some sensor pairs have been placed in both
faces of the panels, as is shown in Fig. 2. The aim of such placement
is to record the differences in deformation and temperature in both
faces of each investigated sandwiched glass, and to evaluate their
isolation capability.
The experimental setup system of the tower is complemented
with a vibration sensor located at the upper floor of the building. It
is a double terminal optical accelerometer, model GS 6500 by Gavea
Sensors. Three types of surface strain sensors have been used, depending
on their suitability to external use. Polyamide sensors provided by
FiberSensing, for example, are easy and quick to install, and have
been installed inside the building.
Sensors provided by MicronOptics are tougher and have better
weathering features, so they were installed outside. In order to define
the distribution of the sensors, the following aspects have been con-
sidered. For measuring strain, FS 6200 sensor model, and for measur-
ing temperature, FS 6300 sensor model, provided by FiberSensing,
have been used. For measuring strain MicronOptics sensors OS 3100
(epoxy bond style) and OS 3200 models have also been used.
3.1.1. Power limitation
The number of sensors that can be placed throughout the optic
channel is limited due to the losses produced along the network,
such as loss insertion of the connectors, bend loss in the fiber, etc.
3.1.2. Wavelength limitation
The range of temperature sensors is ±1.5 nm (100 °C × 10 pm/°C+
0.5 nm) and the range of strain sensors is ±1.1 nm. (500 με × 1.2 pm/
με + 500 pm).
The measurement provided by the strain sensors has to be com-
pensated with the temperature effect on deformation. Therefore, a
temperature sensor is placed between each pair of strain sensors.
The interrogator, model FS 5200 by FiberSensing, has four optical
channels and interrogates each FBG sensor at a frequency of 1 Hz.
It has an additional special optic channel to interrogate the optical
accelerometer with a customizable sample rate with a maximum rate
of 20000 samples per second. This device is a composition of an opti-
cal board designed and assembled by FiberSensing and a National
Instruments' PXI DAQ Card (PXI6040). In this project we need to mea-
sure vibrations of frequency components with 400 Hz maximum, so
according to the sampling theorem, the sampling rate needed is of
800 samples per second.
Fig. 2. Detail of one of the installed FBG sensors.
 R. Unzu et al. / Automation in Construction 30 (2013) 9–14 11

The previous limitations define the number of sensors that can be

installed on each optic channel and they are useful to determine the
most suitable wavelength for each one.
The final system comprises a total of thirty one FBG sensors (20
deformation sensors, 10 temperature sensors and 1 accelerometer)
distributed in four branches or arrays that were located on different
points of the tower:
- Branch 1 Six sensors inside the building, and three sensors outside,
located at the first and second floors.
- Branch 2 Six sensors inside the building at the third floor.
- Branch 3 Nine sensors inside the building at the fourth floor.
- Branch 4 Six sensors inside the building at the fourth floor.
Some of the installed sensors are shown in Fig. 3. All available
channels of the interrogator were utilized.

3.2. Installation and assembly

Prior to the installation and interconnection of the sensors in the

building, we checked whether both the selected configuration of the
sensors and the branches worked properly. Afterwards, the use of a
lift platform was necessary to place the branches in the outside of
the tower, as shown in Fig. 4.
The measurement provided by the strain sensors has to be com-
pensated with the temperature effect on deformation. Therefore, a
temperature sensor is placed between each pair of strain sensors.
Since the aim of the work is the remote monitoring in real-time of
the sensed parameters, it is necessary to interconnect the interrogator
of the sensing network with the general management system of the
building to extract all the data using a remote application.
The chosen building possesses an intelligent control system based
on KNX (European standard for Home and Building Control), which
provides a high degree of flexibility and an important saving in ener-
getic management and maintenance.
Fig. 4. Installation of the external optical sensors.
The utilization of FBG sensors working with KNX networks was
previously proposed by part of us in [10–12]. In order to facilitate
the future management and maintenance of the monitoring system,
we have developed a unique global management tool which controls
both the KNX system and the sensor system. So, in the tower coexists
two kinds of sensor networks, one optical and another KNX.
Making use of the network KNX it was installed a meteorological
station into the building's roof which will give more information
about weather conditions that may affect the enclosure during the re-
alization of this work. The station can measure in real-time the speed
of the wind, the temperature outside and the brightness in three
directions. Furthermore, it has a rain sensor and a more accurate twi-
light brightness sensor. The weather station used is the 2224 HW
model by Jung.
The temperature range, for which the meteorological station
works correctly, goes from − 22 °C to 50 °C. The sensor of wind can
measure winds from 0 m/s to 40 m/s with an accuracy of ± 2 m/s;
however it cannot give information about the direction of the wind.
Similarly, the station detects if it is raining, even with thin drizzle,
but it cannot measure the intensity of the rain. The brightness is mea-
sured from 1 kLx to 110 kLx in the normal brightness sensors and
from 0 to 60 kLx in the twilight one.
The developed management system software tool remotely ac-
quires processes and stores data from these networks. As shown in
Fig. 5, each fiber optic sensor branch is connected to a different optical
channel. The optical accelerometer is connected to the interrogator's
PXI module, also with optical fiber. The KNX/IP interface is connected
with an Ethernet UTP cable to one of the two available interrogator's
network interfaces, and the other is used for connecting the 3 G router,
also using an Ethernet UTP cable.

3.3. Software description

The software of the system consists of five separated modules,

intercommunicated with UDP or TCP, depending on the nature of the
Fig. 3. Optical sensor distribution. data exchanged.
12 R. Unzu et al. / Automation in Construction 30 (2013) 9–14
Fig. 5. System's hardware scheme.
Both protocol works above the Internet IP layer. TCP is a reliable,
connection oriented protocol that will be used for exchanging critical
data whereas the other is a non reliable, non connection oriented pro-
tocol that will be used for sending “streaming” data. The system's
software scheme used is shown in Fig. 6.
The module that obtains the data provided by the optical sensor
network acquired by the interrogator, the BraggMeter module, has
been developed in LabVIEW.
This module communicates with the interrogator proprietary tool,
also programmed in LabVIEW, via shared variables for accessing fiber
optic sensor data from other V.I.s. The sensor data includes the sensor's
name, units and the measured value and can be acquired anytime.
Fig. 6. System's software scheme.
The module that obtains the data provided by the optical acceler-
ometer via the PXI optical card, the BraggScope module, has been also
developed in LabVIEW. For accessing the data from the PXI card using
LabVIEW, the installation of the NI-DAQmx driver software is needed.
This tool is a software interface between the hardware part (in this
case the PXI card) and the software part (in this case, LabVIEW). For
accessing the MySQL database from LabVIEW, “labSQL” [14] library
has been used but first ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) windows
drivers must be installed and properly configured.
This module compresses the data to be sent, using LabVIEW's Zlib
library [15], for making a more efficient use of the Internet connection.
Zlib is free, lossless data compression library and is portable across plat-
forms. The compression rate varies depending on encrypted data, with a
maximum compression factor exceeding 1000:1.
On the other hand, the module that obtains data from the KNX
network, the CalimeroDaemon module, has been developed in Java,
for which the Java library “Calimero” developed in the Vienna Technical
University has been used. This library allows a bidirectional access
to KNX network through an IP interface using KNXnet/IP protocol
(Eur. Family of Std. 13321, 2006).
A hardware KNXnet/IP interface is also needed, that will be used
by the “Calimero” library for interactuating with the KNX meteoro-
logical station. The interface used is the N148/21 model from Siemens.
For data storage, we have used a MySQL server, a powerful open source
database. Finally this module has the functionality of connecting re-
motely with the main module, the SensorViewer module, via Internet
for displaying the sensor networks data in real-time, as well as
displaying the values stored in the database for a given time interval.
For the graphical representation of the sensor data, “JFreechart”
library has been used, written in Java. It has a large variety of different
types of graphics and supports many output types, including Swing
components, image files and vector graphics file formats.
4. Experimental results and conclusions
The network of FBG sensors, the data processing, the data storage
and the automatic remote monitoring of the sensors, are a complete
and well defined system with the capability to perform simultaneously
multiple sensor measurements and to provide both local and global
information about the behavior of the panel under different environ-
mental parameters and operating conditions. Both, the data of the sen-
sors and the information of the meteorological station, have been saved
every fifteen minutes during a year. The placement of the FBG sensors
having different orientations and height positions, and located inside
and outside the tower, allows monitoring the different temperatures
and deformations the panels go through.
As shown in the graph plotted in Fig. 7, panels reach temperatures
higher than outside temperature, understanding as outside tempera-
ture the one measured by the meteorological station. This difference
increases for higher registered outside temperatures. For example,
considering the daily registered maxima temperatures, the average
difference of the temperature inside the last floor with west orienta-
tion and the outside temperature is about 14 °C. Considering the daily
minimum temperature, the average difference does not reach 6 °C.
There is a typical period each day when the outside temperature as
shown in the graph plotted in Fig. 7, panels reach temperatures
higher than outside temperature, understanding as outside tempera-
ture the one measured by the meteorological station.
Considering the daily minimum temperature, the average differ-
ence does not reach 6 °C.
There is a typical period each day when the outside temperature
is higher than the temperature of the panels: from 9:00 to 13:00
(see Fig. 7). At that moment, the temperature difference is negative.
The temperature in each panel depends on the following aspects:
The height: The last floor reaches higher temperatures.
 R. Unzu et al. / Automation in Construction 30 (2013) 9–14
Fig. 7. Strain and temperature measurements of the sensors in branch 3.
The orientation: Depending on the hour of the day, there are sides
of the tower which suffer higher temperatures than the others.
Logically, the North side of the tower remains always the coldest.
Panels in the South side of the building reach higher temperatures
than the other sides from 17:00 to 10:00. This is due to the direct sun-
light of this side during most part of the day.
Based on the simultaneous recording of the strain and the temper-
ature it is possible to observe the deformation of the panels due to the
changes of temperature. Therefore, it is possible to estimate the coef-
ficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of the panels. The CTE is defined as
the unitary thermal deformation of a material depending on the
changes of temperature. Mathematically:
Δε ¼ CTE ΔT:
This coefficient is a physical property of the material, which is usu-
ally obtained by means of laboratory experimental setups. In further
research, coefficient of thermal expansion will be determined in
order to compare it with in situ measurements. For the case of the
glasses used in the panels, the coefficient of thermal expansion is:
CTEGlass = 9 × 10 −6 °C −1.
In order to carry out the estimation of the deformation in the
panels, we established a reference temperature having zero strain
Fig. 8. Measured temperature of an inner sensor (R3t1) and an outer sensor (R4t1) of the same panel and their difference against roof temperature.
13
for T0 = 20 °C. This normalization is necessary because the tempera-
ture in each panel was different in the moment the sensors were
installed.
 
εF ¼ ε0 þ CTE T f −T 0 ð2Þ
Results in Fig. 8 show the effect of the contraction and expansion
that the glasses suffer when the temperature decreases or increases,
respectively. In Fig. 9, it is displayed the temperature that is reached
in both sides of a panel in the last floor of the building, as well as
their difference with room temperature. We confirm that the temper-
ature inside the panel is always higher than that in the outside.
Fig. 10 shows the relationship between the temperature and the
ð1Þ deformation for several panels. The coefficient of determination, R2,
between the temperature and the deformation is in all cases, greater
than 0.9. R2 is a number among 0 and 1. When this value is near to 1,
the acceptance of “lineal relationship” can be assumed.
Therefore, we can conclude that there exists a lineal relationship
between temperature and deformation [13]. Moreover, in this graph
we can observe that there are other factors that produce deforma-
tions to the glass panels. The deformation of the panels depends on
both thermal conditions (changes of temperature) and mechanical
conditions (such as the load of the wind, vibrations, and strain due
14 R. Unzu et al. / Automation in Construction 30 (2013) 9–14
Fig. 9. Strain measurements of 3 sensors against temperature.
to its own weight or mechanical supports used to fix the panels). It
has not been possible to establish a clear relationship between the
load of wind and the strain in the panels, due to the light wind the
panels went through during the measured period.
Figs. 9 and 10 show that panels placed higher show higher de-
formation due to more critical thermal and mechanical conditions
(remember that the range of temperature registered for these panels
is the largest).
Sensors installed in the outside recorded more unstable measure-
ments compared to sensors in the inner side. The base packaging was
not enough to avoid the hostile environment, such as rain, hailstone,
birds, etc. Therefore, some ranges of measurements have not been
considered as reliable.
5. Conclusions
In this paper we have presented what it constitutes, to our knowl-
edge, the first demonstration of in situ monitoring using optical fiber
sensors of new cladding materials for construction. The cladding is com-
posed by double glass panels filled with a new alveolar type structure.
Fig. 10. Strain measurements excluding temperature effects.
The multiplexing system we have developed has monitored re-
motely during a year, using a control system based on 6 KNX sensors,
20 fiberoptic strain sensors, 10 temperature sensors and 1 acceler-
ometer. Using this monitoring system we evaluated the behavior
of the new cladding system. Regarding structural reliability of the
façade, strain measurements (between − 300 and + 400 με) indicate
that double glass panels suitably bear both thermal and mechanical
stresses.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Spanish Government under
grants TEC2007-67987-C02-02 and TEC2010-20224-C02-01 and
grant IIM010566.RI1 from the Government of Navarra.
The authors are grateful to G. Beloki, A. Yoldi, and I.R. Matías,
from UPNA; P. Branchi, and L. Borquez, from AH&A, S. Abad, from
FiberSensing and A. Méndez, from Micron Optics; for their help at
the beginning of the project. We also thank TRACASA for their avail-
ability and help.
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