Design, Implementation and Standardization of Overlay Networking Protocols and Device Metadata towards Smart Home

Many researches and standardizations have been done for controlling and managing home networks and devices during past ten years. Such activities and technologies include UPnP/DLNA, ECHONET and Continua Health Alliance and so on. However, such technologies control and manage specifi c home devices. There have been no technologies and standards for controlling and managing such heterogeneous home devices over heterogeneous home networks in an integrated manner. In addition, such standards fully defi ne technologies for controlling and managing such home devices from outside home through mobile phones and cloud servers. Compared with traditional home networking technologies, peer-to-peer/overlay networking technologies have functions to realize resource discovery, multi-hop networking in a highly distributed manner. Peer-topeer/overlay networking is one of the most important and suitable technologies for communications among home devices over heterogeneous home networks. In addition, metadata is also an important technology for describing various home devices in a consistent manner. We have designed overlay networking protocols and metadata for realizing various applications, which include home devices control and management. We explain our overlay networking and device metadata technologies, and describe the general middleware platform, which have implemented such technologies in more details. Our middleware platform are now running over PCs, home gateways (HGWs), mobile phones, tablet devices, cloud servers and so on. Applications towards smart home having been developed over our middleware platform are also described. Peer-to-peer Universal Computing Consortium (PUCC) was established in 2005, to deploy our overlay networking protocols and device metadata technologies toward de facto standardization. Keyword: Overlay Network, Home Network, ECHONET, UPnP, PUCC Journal of Global Media Studies Vol. 17·18 ― 44 ― DMS via the LAN to the DMP for viewing. The DLNA Guidelines 1.0 and 1.5 were developed in October 2004 and March 2006 respectively, and DLNA compliant devices have been developed, focusing on PCs, TVs, Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and Blu-ray disk players, digital music players and so on. DLNA is also conducting a logo certifi cation program to ensure interconnectivity between products developed by various manufacturers. To protect copyright in the transfer of content, the Link Protection Guidelines for Digital Transmission Content Protection over IP (DTCP-IP) were developed in October 2006. UPnP/DLNA-compliant AV devices have been developed and deployed, to allow sharing of downloaded digital content (e.g. Video, Audio) among AV devices, listening digital music from HDD via a digital music player and so on. 1.2 ECHONET [3] Energy Conservation and Homecare Network (ECHONET) is a standard for control of air conditioners, lighting equipment, and other home appliances and facility devices such as power consumption monitors and other sensors. While Version 1.0 of the ECHONET specifi cations was developed in March 2000, some manufacturers have developed ECHONET-compliant products, and such products are available in the market, but such products have not yet spread throughout the market as a whole. Because the recent trend is to communicate with AV devices, version 3.60 of the ECHONET specifi cations was published in December 2007. It includes gateway specifi cations that allow conversion between ECHONET and UPnP. ECHONET Lite was published in December 2011. ECHONET Lite simplifi es ECHONET specifi cations by removing their specifi cations in physical layer. The main purpose of ECHONET Lite is to apply ECHONET specifi cations to Home Energy Management System (HEMS). For this purpose, ECHONET Lite defi nes an ECHONET object for a smart meter, and ECHONET properties for energy management on home appliances such as airconditioner. 1.3 OSGi [4] Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) was founded in March 1999 and has since been working on standards for mechanisms for the remote and dynamic addition and changing of home gateway (HGW) functions. OSGi middleware is installed on HGWs that execute Java Virtual Machine (VM). OSGi middleware enables a HGW to add various functions to be executed on it, by downloading specifi c Java components called bundles from cloud servers. OSGi release 4, published in 2005, extended the OSGi specifi cations for mobile devices. OSGi middleware has been implemented and used on various devices such as mobile phones and invehicle devices, in addition to HGWs. 1.4 Continua Health Alliance [5] Continua Health Alliance was founded in June, 2006. Continua Healthcare design guidelines version 1 was developed in June 2009. The guidelines defi ne specifi cations, which are based on ISO/IEC 11073 Personal Health Data (PHD) standards [6], between healthcare devices and gateways (e.g. PC) via USB and Bluetooth. Such healthcare devices include blood pressure monitor, thermometer and weighing scale and so on. Many healthcare devices are available in the market, which are compliant with Continua Healthcare design guidelines. PC software that implements protocol stacks and device drivers, which are compliant with the above design guidelines, are available from some software vendors. 2. Problems on Standardization Regarding Home Networks and Devices Various standards have been developed for different classes of home devices as described in section 1. There is no compatibility among those standards. In addition, there are no standards for security devices such as security camera and electronic key. Such devices support proprietary specifi cation developed by vendors. Two main problems posed by this situation are described below (Figure 1).