Networking and Communication in Smart Home for People with Disabilities

People with disabilities need several assistive technical aids to increase their autonomy and perform daily living tasks. This paper describes the role of networking and communication in the smart home concept which allows people with disabilities and elderly people to retain a certain level of independence within their daily environment, such as at home, work, school, outside and so on. The purpose of our research activity is to explore the difficulties by determining the most suitable approach to federate the different communication protocols available indoor and outdoor environments. In this paper we are presenting our main concept in the design of the smart home architecture. We also describe our approach to design an open software environment adapted to people with disabilities. This approach is based on the service discovery protocol UPnP (Universal Plan and Play) to discover devices in smart home. It is based also on wireless technologies and protocols (Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.) to enhance mobility and dependency. Some solutions are adapted to favor integration of new modules and devices, and to improve the communication between the different layers of our software architecture.