  Building environments are significant sources of global energy consumption.
To create energy efficient buildings, the first step is to sense and monitor
all the energy-consuming appliances in the buildings and record all the energy
consumption information. After that, appropriate energy saving policies can be
decided and the instructions can be sent to the control devices to apply the
energy saving adjustments. To do that, in-building two-way communication
networks are needed to connect all the sensors to collect information as well
as to send control instructions. However, most of the current devices are
provided by separate manufacturers and with separate network infrastructures
and so there is not much integration and interaction among different
subsystems. In this paper, we envision a new energy sensing and monitoring
framework with integrated communication backbone in the intelligent building
environments. Specifically, through comprehensive comparisons and
investigations, we study different candidate communicating media and protocols
like wireline, wireless, and power-line communications technologies that
potentially can be used in the intelligent buildings to realize the goals of
coordination, integration, and energy efficiency. Also, we propose an extension
"smart box" for integration of the devices before the maturity of the
standardization process. Cloud computing and smart phone technologies are also
introduced to realize the goals of improving energy efficiency and promote
global sustainability.
