Multi-channel Sensor Network Construction, Data Fusion and Challenges for Smart Home

Both sensor networks and data fusion are essential foundations for developing the smart home Internet of Things (IoT) and related fields. We proposed a multi-channel sensor network construction method involving hardware, acquisition, and synchronization in the smart home environment and a smart home data fusion method (SHDFM) for multi-modal data (position, gait, voice, pose, facial expression, temperature, and humidity) generated in the smart home environment to address the configuration of a multi-channel sensor network, improve the quality and efficiency of various human activities and environmental data collection, and reduce the difficulty of multi-modal data fusion in the smart home. SHDFM contains 5 levels, with inputs and outputs as criteria to provide recommendations for multi-modal data fusion strategies in the smart home. We built a real experimental environment using the proposed method in this paper. To validate our method, we created a real experimental environment - a physical setup in a home-like scenario where the multi-channel sensor network and data fusion techniques were deployed and evaluated. The acceptance and testing results show that the proposed construction and data fusion methods can be applied to the examples with high robustness, replicability, and scalability. Besides, we discuss how smart homes with multi-channel sensor networks can support digital twins.