Agent communication channel based on BACnet

We analyze the common shortcoming in the existing agent MTPs (message transport protocols). With employing the File object and related service AtomicWriteFile of BACnet (a data communication protocol building automation and control networks), a new method of agent message transport is proposed and implemented. Every agent platform (AP) has one specified File object and agents in another AP can communicate with agents in the AP by using AtomicWriteFile service. Agent messages can be in a variety of formats. In implementation, BACnet/IP and Ethernet are applied as the BACnet data link layers respectively. The experiment results show that the BACnet can provide perfect support for agent communication like other conventional protocols such as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), remote method invocation (RMI) etc. and has broken through the restriction of TCP/IP. By this approach, the agent technology is introduced into the building automation control network system.