Average 40 Nodes Per House for a Home Automation Installation

The following piece of news/blog quotes some numbers from ON World research report. Zigbee and Z-wave are assumed to implied to dominate the wireless home automation market. No argument to this fact as we see today.

A further simple calculation gives me this result: $2.8 billion / 14 million households = $200 /households.

So the price of the smart household wireless sensor network is at average $200 each. Let's further assume $5 per nodes, then we get 40 nodes per such home used WSN. Not a large scale. I think this number is realistic. With this scale, it confirms my points in my previous blog that a mesh topology may be overkill even in home automation application, and some simple technologies (in terms of networking capability) with cheaper cost, such as Wibree, ANT etc. may get a pie from this market.


Research: 14 Million Smart Wireless Sensor Network Households in 2012

Recent research from ON World has found that the "smart home" is becoming a reality for the mass market thanks to emerging standards, increasing energy costs, and advances in Wireless Sensor Networking (WSN).

The wireless smart home market is accelerating and indicators of this growth include hundreds of products currently shipping and established service providers like AT&T and K Telecom ( News - Alert), who are starting to offer WSN-based home monitoring services.

ON World conducted this extensive research with over 100 home installers, vendors, and suppliers.

The residential sector is an essential target market for wireless sensing and control solutions with a total potential market size of 6 billion cumulative WSN nodes worldwide. Some of the largest and fastest growing smart home markets include lighting, energy management, security, entertainment control, and home health.

According to the research, the market for the Wireless Sensor Network smart home will increase from $470 million in 2007 to $2.8 billion worldwide by 2012.

Darryl Gurganious, senior research analyst for ON World, said in a statement to the press, “While proprietary WSN systems have been used by professional installers in luxury homes for over a decade, wireless protocols such as Z-Wave and ZigBee will make smart home solutions affordable for the average household.”

The report also points to major factors behind the growth of the smart home market that include the success of wireless mesh networking protocols such as ZigBee and Z-Wave, and the industry alliances that were formed to promote each of these.

Currently, a battle between ZigBee and Z-Wave for control over the smart home is occurring. While ZigBee-based solutions are preferred by global manufacturers and professional installers, retail focused companies such as Actiontec, Intermatic, Jasco, Hawking, and Monster Cable have said to prefer Z-Wave.