Targeting the common pain points in smart building retrofitting—such as information silos, crude operation and maintenance practices, and difficulties in cross-system coordination—this solution employs industrial computers as core scheduling nodes, complemented by industrial-grade equipment including cellular router, IoT gateway device, serial-to-Ethernet adapter, industrial switches, and cellular modem. It builds a highly reliable "end-edge-cloud" integrated networking architecture that fully adapts to the complex device access and data transmission requirements within buildings.
This solution adopts a three-layer distributed networking architecture that is fully adaptable to the multi-scenario deployment needs of smart buildings.
The perception layer covers all front-end devices within the building, including access controllers, fire sensing terminals, smart meters, temperature and humidity sensors, and elevator operation monitoring modules.
The edge layer uses industrial computers as the core, working in conjunction with IoT gateway devices, serial-to-Ethernet adapters, and other equipment to perform local data preprocessing.
The core layer leverages industrial switches and cellular routers to enable high-speed data upload to the building's smart management platform, while also supporting integration with city-level smart building supervision platforms.
The industrial computer is deployed in the main weak-current equipment room on the building's basement level, serving as the local scheduling core for the entire building's networking infrastructure. It replaces traditional commercial servers to undertake core computing tasks at the edge. Featuring multiple network ports and wide-temperature, wide-voltage hardware design, it can operate stably in weak-current rooms with ambient temperatures exceeding 50°C without requiring additional cooling or temperature control equipment.
In practical applications, the industrial computer, on one hand, aggregates data from all local subsystems, performing unified data cleansing, protocol conversion, and caching for building automation, security surveillance, fire warning, and other multi-system data. Even if the building's external network connection is temporarily interrupted, it ensures over 72 hours of local business continuity, avoiding the total paralysis that occurs with traditional solutions when the network goes down.
On the other hand, it handles customized configuration of local linkage logic, enabling cross-system intelligent coordination without relying on the cloud. For example, when a fire warning is triggered, it automatically executes linkage actions such as access control unlocking, elevator forced landing, and full lighting activation—with response latency controlled within 100 milliseconds, far faster than traditional cloud-issued command response times.
Additionally, the industrial computer supports a local visual O&M interface, allowing property maintenance personnel to view device status and adjust parameters for all building equipment locally without logging into a remote platform, significantly lowering the barrier to operations and maintenance.
To address the access requirements of different building areas, the remaining industrial equipment is deployed as needed:
【Underground Garage Areas】In building underground garages, equipment floors, and other areas dense with legacy RS485 devices, dual-serial-port industrial serial-to-Ethernet adapters are deployed to directly convert traditional serial devices—such as electricity meters, water meters, and lighting control modules—to network signals for LAN access. This eliminates the need to replace existing equipment, significantly reducing retrofitting costs. A single serial-to-Ethernet adapter can simultaneously access two RS485 devices, adapting to the dispersed sensor nodes within the building.
For dispersed nodes with difficult cabling, such as meteorological monitoring stations and outdoor smart lighting on building rooftops, industrial-grade 4G DTUs are deployed. These devices directly transmit data back to the core platform via carrier networks, eliminating the need for additional network cable laying and adapting to scenarios where no pre-embedded network cables exist outdoors.
In the building's smart construction support areas and temporary office zones, 5G+WiFi 6 cellular routers are deployed. These support PoE power reception for cable-free rapid deployment and feature dual-SIM card redundant backup, ensuring stable transmission of high-bandwidth services such as HD surveillance and tower crane monitoring. This resolves the challenges of difficult cabling and unstable networking in temporary areas.
In building weak-current shafts and floor distribution rooms, Layer 3 industrial Ethernet switches are deployed with -40°C to 85°C wide-temperature design and IP40 protection rating. They connect to the core industrial computer via 10-gigabit uplink links, while gigabit ports access devices such as cameras and access terminals on each floor. VLAN partitioning logically isolates the security network, building automation network, and office network, preventing mutual interference between different services and ensuring network priority for critical services such as fire protection and security.
IoT gateway devices are deployed adjacent to key equipment such as building elevator machine rooms and chiller units. They perform real-time analysis of equipment operation data locally, pre-identifying potential equipment failure risks, and upload only preprocessed valid data to the industrial computer—significantly reducing the occupancy of core network bandwidth by invalid data.
This fully industrial-grade equipment networking solution completely resolves the information silo problem inherent in traditional smart buildings. All subsystem data is uniformly scheduled through the industrial computer, improving cross-system linkage efficiency by over 75%.
The high-reliability characteristics of industrial-grade equipment enable the overall network to achieve an annual online rate of 99.99%, far exceeding traditional commercial networking solutions. At the same time, the solution fully leverages existing legacy serial devices within the building, reducing overall retrofitting costs by 40% compared to traditional full-replacement solutions, and decreasing O&M manpower input by 60%. It establishes a solid underlying network foundation for the long-term stable and intelligent operation of smart buildings.
