Mika Saaranen

A Network Connectivity Power-Saving Mechanism for Mobile Devices in DLNA Home Networks

Mobile devices are increasingly assuming an important role in “smart home” network environments. Although their computing, storage and networking capabilities have evolved significantly, these devices remain power-constrained and, therefore, need to actively take measures to minimize their power consumption. In this paper, we propose a Network Connectivity Power Saving (NC-PS) mechanism for mobile devices in Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) home networks, which allows them to conserve power without compromising their higher-layer functionality. The proposed mechanism introduces a level of indirection that abstracts the low-level low-power support of different wireless bearers and exposes a uniform interface to higher-layer entities, such as applications and Universal–Plugand-Play (UPnP) agents. We define four abstract NC-PS modes and we describe their mapping in the case of Bluetooth, a common wireless bearer for mobile devices, now supported in DLNA.

Using client-server applications in proximity networking

Our daily environment is becoming well networked. People are using mobile devices to access services available in their current environment. Proximity network is a new kind of environment, which belongs to the class of ad hoc networks with only single hop links. Ad hoc type environment is a problematic environment for legacy or client-server applications that expect availability of Internet infrastructure services like DNS. In order to work in spontaneous networks legacy applications need additional support, e.g., to locate the services and to replace missing infrastructure services. We present a solution that modifies network socket interface implementation so that additional functionality is executed when a terminal is in a spontaneous network. This includes adaptively deploying multicast DNS, SLP to locate the services and to determine correct IP addresses for the legacy applications. The solution also incorporates selected server functionality to mobile terminals so that they can serve other terminals when needed. As an example we use SIP and games to demonstrate the feasibility of our solution