Kyeong-Deok Moon

Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware

The paper proposes the design of a software universal middleware bridge (UMB) that can be used to solve seamless interoperability problems caused by the heterogeneity of several kinds of home network middleware. The proposed UMB dynamically maps physical devices in all the different middleware domains into virtually abstracted devices in the UMB domain and enables all home devices overlaid on heterogeneous networks to be seen as virtually the same physical devices in the same middleware domain, as well as to detect and control each other.

Resource-aware smart home management system by constructing resource relation graph

With the advent of smart home devices including Smart TV or smart appliances, home becomes smarter. Smart home is a complex environment where heterogeneous smart devices and appliances are connected to each other to provide various smart services. As the home environments become smarter and more complex, the need for an effective managing mechanism with minimum users intervention is growing. However, just only putting together all the individual information of each resource is not enough, since it is very hard to catch out overall home situation without the relation information between the managed resources. In this paper, we propose a resource-aware management system with hierarchical smart home resource model, using the home context information which defines the information convergence model of heterogeneous home resources and builds a home knowledge by constructing a resource relation graph. The proposed system can accelerate deployment of advanced future smart home service features such as context-aware dynamic service composition, autonomous fault management systems. In addition, it allows cost effective remote maintenance system with highly convenient manageability. We implemented the prototype system of our proposed architecture and evaluated the performance on the query response time of home resources and relations in a real environment. Results showed that it has acceptable performance for navigating or control of home information and excellent improvements in terms of relation based search. We anticipate that the proposed system will bring the huge benefits not only to the consumers, home network service providers but also to the home network maintenance companies in terms of ease of management, and diagnostic effectiveness.

Universal home network middleware guaranteeing seamless interoperability among the heterogeneous home network middleware

Users will be able to access ubiquitously present appliances anywhere and anytime through home network. For this, we need middleware that provides a highlevel abstraction, self-configuration, and guarantees the interoperability among middleware. However, most home network middleware does not ensure interoperability with different middleware. This paper presents the UHNM architecture, which guarantees seamless interoperability among the heterogeneous home network middleware for future home. The UHNM provides the high-level abstraction and zero-configuration, and makes new services without great effort.

A control network architecture based on EIA-709.1 protocol for power line data communications

This paper presents an EIA-709.1 protocol architecture that can alleviate the burden of data communications in the Neuron chip. The proposed protocol is implemented with partly hardware and partly software. The physical layer and the MAC layer of the EIA-709.1 protocol are implemented with hardware. The upper link layer of the EIA-709.1 protocol is implemented with software. We verified the commercial feasibility of the proposed system through the power line tests with the existing LonWorks network. As a result, it is concluded that the proposed architecture provides flexibility and cost benefit for the system implementations.

Architecture for interoperability of services between an ACAP receiver and home networked devices

As digital convergence of home networking and broadcasting technologies is being accelerated, it becomes increasingly important to achieve interoperability of not only heterogeneous devices but also various types of services. Therefore, in this paper, we describe the design and implementation of architecture for interoperability of data broadcasting and home networking services based on the ACAP middleware and the UMB stack. The proposed architecture provides a TV-centric user interface capable of managing home networking services using TV sets, by applying Java TV Xlet interface and HAVi user interface APIs for home networking sendees such as data broadcasting services. In addition, it provides data broadcasting services through metadata and media streaming for home networked devices without ACAP middleware.

IEEE 1394/UPnP software bridge

This paper presents the IEEE 1394/UPnP software bridge for representing legacy IEEE 1394 devices to UPnP devices. UPnP devices must provide SSDP discovery, SOAP control, and GENA event processes. To represent the legacy IEEE1394 devices to UPnP devices, there have to be the IEEE 1394/UPnP software bridge to provide those functionalities on behalf of IEEE 1394 devices. The bridge can provide additional functions such as A/V data transferring with format converting between IEEE 1394 and UPnP devices. With those functionalities, the bridge makes UPnP control points recognize IEEE 1394 devices as UPnP devices, and makes possible exchange the A/V data between IEEE 1394 legacy devices and normal UPnP devices. Based on the general structure of the bridge, it can be easily extended to support a new IEEE 1394 device type.

A Java-based home network middleware architecture supporting IEEE1394 and TCP/IP

IEEE1394 is a standard interface protocol for digital multimedia consumer devices and it also serves to construct home entertainment networks. To integrate home data and home entertainment networks, this paper proposes a Java-based middleware architecture supporting IEEE1394 and TCP/IP for digital home entertainment networks. The proposed architecture is able to provide interoperability between 1394-based services and TCP-based services, and accommodates multimedia service requirements in home network environments having various protocols and devices. In this architecture, we introduce a queueing mechanism to communicate with TCP/IP and IEEE1394, and it is fully compatible with Jini/spl trade/ network technology using TCP/IP.

Scalable message translation mechanism for the environment of heterogeneous middleware

Various home network middleware such as HAVi, LnCP, LonWorks, and UPnP have been designed. They coexist because one middleware cannot support diverse requests of services and devices. This circumstance creates an interoperability problem among devices based on various types of home network middleware. The Universal Middleware Bridge system is designed and implemented to solve this interoperability problem using a device conversion mechanism and a message translation mechanism among the middleware. These conversion mechanisms make it possible for devices to distinguish and control other devices connected to different middleware networks in the Universal Middleware Bridge system. These mechanisms also easily support new device and middleware by adding some XML files.

Real-time carousel caching and monitoring in data broadcasting

This paper proposes a DSM-CC carousel caching and management architecture that can support both priority-based scheduling of monitoring threads and caching of carousel objects for a quick launch and download of Xlet. The carousel objects are broadcast cyclically by the transmission policy. Lack of carousel object reception may cause performance deterioration. The data broadcasting middleware should guarantee real-time characteristics such as the processing time in periodic monitoring threads to detect a change in information without a long latency time. Therefore this proposed architecture could improve the predictability of periodic monitoring section filter threads by using the managing the thread pool and scheduling periodic threads. To guarantee fast launch of the data broadcasting application, this paper also proposes the cache control mechanism of DSM-CC data/object carousel. This proposed architecture could accommodate data broadcasting middleware that uses DSM-CC object carousel mechanisms, such as ACAP, OCAP and MHP

Design and implementation of an adaptive middleware based on the universal middleware bridge for heterogeneous home networks

As home networks become more complex and dynamic, it is crucial to support seamless interoperability through automatic reconfiguration and robustness through the efficient handling of faults. This paper presents an adaptive middleware that provides an adaptive autonomic configuration for the heterogeneous home networks and an autonomous fault management that includes fault diagnosis and recovery from unexpected faults such as device plug-outs, network link failures, service failures, and other such incidents. The proposed adaptive middleware is based on the universal middleware bridge (UMB) to guarantee interoperability and robustness in the middleware layer appropriate to heterogeneous home networks.