A survey on QoE and energy cost optimization strategies for smart buildings

With smart and connected communities emerging as an important facet of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, next generation Building Automation Systems (BAS) become evident as one of their prime offerings. The performance of BAS is highly dependent on how well a building does on the fronts of energy efficiency and indoor Quality of Experience (QoE) provided to the users. Higher QoE or comfort expectations impose heavy demands on overall energy consumption of buildings. The inherent conflict in the objectives, namely, maximizing of QoE for users while minimizing the energy costs incurred in the process, is recognised as a complex problem and hence the intrinsic details in its mathematical formulation need attention. This paper presents a survey of energy cost and QoE optimization strategies proposed in recent years with emphasis on the objectives and modelling of the multi-objective optimization problem. A brief summary of the tools and techniques used to solve the optimization problem is also presented. A few research directions are also provided based on the findings of the survey.