Smart Home Technologies

Networking

Networking for Smart

Homes

Requirements
Network Topologies
Technologies

Networking

Service Discovery

Requirements

Noise Rejection

Bandwidth

Sensors have to be connected to processing units

Integration

Smart Homes can contain many sensors and actuators

Sensor data can be generated at different rates

Connectivity

Network has to allow for reliable communication

Requires preservation of data and synchronization of
data lines

Network structures have to be integrated into buildings

Privacy and Security

Smart Home networks will transfer private and

sensitive data

Bandwidth Requirements
Example

Camera (15) 320x240, 8-bit color

Motion (15) distance, direction, velocity
Temperature (12)
Humidity (12)
Light (12) frequency, intensity
Microphone (12) 8000 Hz
Gas (4)
Pressure (100)

Bandwidth Requirements
Sensor

Number

Bits/sec (1)

Bits/sec (total)

Camera
(320x240) 8-bit
color

15

184,320

2,764,800

Motion
(dir/dis/vel)

15

48

720

Temperature

12

16

192

Humidity

12

16

192

Light (inten/freq)

12

32

384

Microphone
(8KHz)

12

64,000

768,000

16

64

Pressure

100

16

1600

Total

182

248,464

3,535,952

Gas

Other Bandwidth
Requirements

Audio

Phones (16 kHz, 8 bit)

Radios (44 kHz, 16 bit)
TVs (44 kHz, 16 bit)
Media players (44 kHz,
16 bit)
Monitoring (16 kHz, 8
bit)

2.4 Mbits/sec (one

each)
Internet, control,

Video

Phones (30fps,
320x240, 8-bit color)
TVs (60 fps, 1024x768,
24-bit color)
Video players (60 fps,
1024x768, 24-bit color)
Monitoring (30 fps,
320x240, 8-bit color)

~6.9 Gbits/sec (one

each)

Other Bandwidth
Requirements

Other Network
Requirements

Worst-case throughput: 10
Gbits/sec
Maximum throughput: 5 Gbits/sec
Quality of Service (QoS)

Audio, video

Plug and play (service discovery)

Network Topologies

Infrastructure-Based Networks

Point-To-Point Networks

Pre-defined routes through the network

Nodes can directly address each other and routers
forward packets appropriately
Addition of nodes changes the routing pattern
Every node has a connection to every other node
Communication is directly between the nodes
High overhead setting up the connections for new nodes

Ad-Hoc Networks

Routes are determined on the fly and can change

Nodes forward signals for other nodes
Addition of nodes can be handled relatively
straightforwardly

Topologies (Point-to-Point)

Every device is connected to

every other device
Good points

simplest approach
no addressing needed
everyone is your neighbor
you can always talk to your neighbor

Bad points

number of ports/lines grow relatively

quickly with the number of devices

Topologies (Hierarchy)

A
B

Devices are connected via hubs to

other devices

Good points

fewer connections
devices can have neighborhoods

Bad points

If everyone is connected to a single hub, it

is called a Star topology

you need an address

you may have to wait to talk to a neighbor
asymmetric communication with some
devices

Topologies (Broadcast)

All of the devices are connected to a

single wire
Good points
Bad points

single wire
everyone is your neighbor

you need an address

you may have to wait to talk to anyone
collisions can occur
communication times become statistical

Physical Addresses

0001

B
C
D

111
1
1000

If more than two devices are on the same wire

(bus), you will need an address to send and
receive data
Approaches

Issues

1100

separate vs. combined data/address lines

hardwired vs. selectable address

as the number of devices increase, the address

space (size of the address) must increase
hardwired addresses may tell you nothing about the
network topology
addresses will be used up by devices that might not
be on-line

so your address space may be too big, causing too

much overhead

Virtual Addresses

A
B
C

00

A solution to some physical address

problems is a virtual address

0
1
10

Approaches

11

the address space (size of the address) can be

reduced by only giving addresses to on-line
devices
addresses can be set up to support network
topology
fixed vs. run-time addresses
universal vs. p-to-p addresses

Issues

how to assign them

their relationship to the physical address

Network Technologies

Wired

Phone Line
Power Line
New Wire

Wireless

RF
Infrared

Wired Network Technology

Examples

Phone line

Power line

Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA)

X10
Consumer Electronics Bus (CEBus)
HomePlug
LonWorks

New wire

Ethernet (coax, twisted pair, optical fiber)

Universal Serial Bus (USB)
IEEE 1394 Firewire

Home Audio Video Interoperability (HAVi)

Specialty: audio, video

Phoneline Networking

Home Phoneline Networking Alliance

(HomePNA)

IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet)

www.homepna.org
Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision
Detect (CSMA/CD)

10 Mbps (HPNA 2.0)

Length: 500 feet

HomePNA Packet

HomePNA Frequencies

Standard voice (POTS): 20Hz - 3.4kHz

UADSL: 25kHz - 1.1MHz
Home network: 5.5MHz - 9.5MHz

Phoneline Network Issues

Random wiring topologies & signal

attenuation

Home phoneline wiring system is a random

tree topology
Simply plugging in the phone or disconnecting
the fax changes the tree
This topology can cause signal attenuation

Signal noise

Appliances, heaters, air conditioners,

consumer appliances & telephones can
introduce signal noise onto the phone wires

Powerline Networking

Ubiquity of power lines

10+ Mbps
Technologies

X10
Consumer Electronics Bus (CEBus)
HomePlug
LonWorks

X10

X10 controllers send signals over

existing AC wiring to receiver
modules
X10 technology transmits binary
data using the Amplitude
Modulation (AM) technique
www.x10.com

X10

To differentiate the data symbols, the

carrier uses the zero-voltage crossing
point of the 60Hz AC sine wave on the
cycles positive or negative transition
Synchronized receivers accept the
carrier at each zero-crossing point
X10 uses two zero crossings to
transmit a binary digit so as to reduce
errors

X10

Every bit requires a full 60 Hertz cycle and

thus the X10 transmission rate is limited to
only 60 bps
Usually a complete X10 command consists
of two packets with a 3 cycle gap between
each packet

Each packet contains two identical messages

of 11 bits (or 11 cycles) each
A complete X-10 command consumes 47
cycles that yields a transmission time of about
0.8s

Consumer Electronics Bus

(CEBus)

Open standard providing separate physical

layer specification for communication on
power lines and other media

Electronic Industries Association (EIA-600)

www.cebus.org

Data packets are transmitted by the

transceiver at about 10 Kbps
Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detect
(CSMA/CD)
Employing spread spectrum technology
(100Hz-400 Hz)

OSI and CEBus (EIA-600)

Spread Spectrum
Modulation

Frequency spectrum of a data-signal is

spread using a code uncorrelated with
that signal
Sacrifices bandwidth to gain signal-tonoise performance

HomePlug

HomePlug Powerline Alliance

www.homeplug.org

Spread-spectrum technology

HomePlug

Speed

Support file transfers at 10BaseT-like rates

Either node-to-node file transfer or scenarios
with multiple nodes performing simultaneous
file transfers
HomePlug 1.0 (14 Mbps)

Voice over IP (VoIP)

Maintain adequate QoS while supporting

multiple, simultaneous VoIP calls while other
nodes are transferring files and during
multiple media streams

HomePlug

Interoperability

Interoperate with other networking

technologies
Co-exist with existing powerline networking
technologies such as X-10, CEBus and LonWorks

Security

Contain strong privacy features

Support multiple logical networks on a single
physical medium
Be applicable to markets in North America,
Europe and Asia

LonWorks

Local Operation Networks (LonWorks)

Developed by Echelon Corporation

www.echelon.com

Provides a peer-to-peer communication

protocol, implementing Carrier Sense
Multiple Access (CSMA) techniques
1.25 Mbps
Works for other wired and wireless media

LonWorks

A common message-based
communications protocol
LonTalk protocol implements all
seven layers of the OSI model using
a mixture of hardware and firmware
on a silicon chip
Protocol can be run as fast as 20
MHz

Powerline Network Issues

Noise

Switching power supplies

Wound motors

Vacuum cleaners, kitchen appliances,

drills

Dimmers

Security
Signal attenuation

New Wire Networking

Ethernet (coax, twisted pair, optical

fiber)
Universal Serial Bus (USB)
IEEE 1394 Firewire

Home Audio Video Interoperability (HAVi)

Specialty: audio, video

Ethernet

IEEE 802.3

IEEE 802.3ae

CSMA/CD
Up to 1 Gbps
10GBase-X, 10 Gps
Lengths up to 40 km

www.ethermanage.com/ethernet

IEEE 802.3

Universal Serial Bus (USB)

www.usb.org
480 Mbps
Plug and Play
Hot pluggable
Up to 127 devices simultaneously
Powered bus
5m maximum cable length

IEEE 1394 Firewire (i.LINK)

Digital interface

No need to convert digital data into

analog and tolerate a loss of data
integrity
Transferring data @ 100, 200, 400 Mbps

Physically small

The thin serial cable can replace larger

and more expensive interfaces

IEEE 1394 Firewire

No need for terminators or device

IDs
Hot pluggable

Users can add or remove 1394

devices with the bus active

Scaleable architecture

May mix 100, 200, and 400 Mbps

devices on a bus

IEEE 1394 Firewire

It can connect up to 63 devices @

transfer rate of 400Mbps
Up to 16 nodes can be daisychained through the connectors

Standard cables up to 4.5 m in length

for a total standard cable length of 72
m

IEEE 1394 Firewire

Flexible topology

Support of daisy chaining and

branching for true peer-to-peer
communication

Non-proprietary

IEEE 1394b

1394b is a significant enhancement to

the basic 1394 specification that enables:

Speed increases to 3.2 Gbps

Distances of 100 meters on UTP-5, plastic
optical fiber and glass optical fiber
Significantly reduces latency times by using
arbitration

Fully backwards compatible with the

current 1394 and 1394a specifications

I2C

(Inter-Integrated Circuit)

One of the oldest controller buses

Philips (1980s)

Low-cost chip-to-chip communication link

uses two wires to form a clocked serial bus

one called Clock (SCL) and the other Data (SDA)

the SDA carries address, selection, control,

and data

Overview

multi-master bus (up to 1024 devices)

can run at speed up to 3.4 Mbps
can be used as a SAN

but normal ranges are on the order of 14 cm

Home Audio Video

Interoperability (HAVi)

HAVi is a digital Audio Video

networking initiative that provides a
home networking software
specification

Seamless interoperability among home

entertainment products

Designed to meet the particular

demands of digital audio and video
www.havi.org

HAVi

Defines operating-system-neutral
middleware that manages:

Takes advantage of chips built into modern

audio and video appliances

Multi-directional AV streams
Event schedule
Registries

Provides the management function of a dedicated

audio-video networking system

IEEE 1394 (i. LINK or FireWire) has been

chosen as the interconnection medium

Specialty Wiring

Audio

Video

Coax
RCA
Speaker wire
Coax
RCA
VGA

~100m maximum cable lengths

Automotive Inspired
Busses

LIN
(Local Interconnect Network)

Designed for European cars (still used)

Very simple

single wire
single mastered bus

Overview

1 master, up to 16 Slaves
uses a message-based protocol
maximum distance of 40 m
Two data rates

9,600 and 19.2 Kbps

CAN
(Controller Area Network )

CAN was designed to support emission

control system in European cars

Capable of

but became a general automation control bus

high-speed (1 Mbits/s) data transmission over short
distances (40 m)
low-speed (5 kbits/s) transmissions at lengths of up
to 10,000 m

Overview

a multi-master bus
highly fault tolerant

Built-in support for error detection and handling

MOST
(Media Oriented System
Transport)

An inexpensive
automotive and
appliance network

25 Mbps fiber-optic
bus
for real-time data
transfer
used in surroundsound systems and
CD and DVD
players

FlexRay

Designed to replace LIN, CAN and MOST

as a by wire solution for future cars
It is a fiber-optic bus (like MOST)
Current speed

But it is designed to go much higher

10 Mbps
could run faster than 100 Mbps

But remember

that is faster than most current microcontrollers internal bus speed

Wireless Network
Technologies

Digital Enhanced Cordless

Telecommunications (DECT)
HomeRF
Bluetooth
IEEE 802.11
HiperLAN2
Infrared

General Wireless

Narrow band
Spread spectrum

Direct Sequence (DSSS)

Frequency Hopping (FHSS)

Orthogonal Frequency Division

Multiplexing (OFDM)

DECT

Digital Enhanced Cordless

Telecommunications (DECT)
www.dectweb.com
Digital radio technology
Dynamic channel selection
Encryption, authentication, identification
500 Kbps 2 Mbps
Cordless phones

HomeRF

www.homerf.org
Shared Wireless Access Protocol
(SWAP)

IEEE 802.11 for data

DECT for voice

HomeRF

Specifications

2.4 GHz band

FHSS
1.6 Mbps (10 Mbps with SWAP 2.0)
50m range
127 nodes

Bluetooth

www.bluetooth.com
Ericsson, the principal inventor,
borrowed the name from Harald
Bluetooth (son of Gorm)

The King of Denmark circa 900AD

United Denmark and Norway

Bluetooth

Specifications

2.4 GHz
FHSS (79 channels)

1600 hops per second

Error correction

1 Mbps capacity, 780 Kbps throughput

10m distance
Low power (1 mW)

Bluetooth

Personal Area Networks (PANs)

Piconet

Collection of up to 8 devices using

same hopping sequence

Scatternet

Collection of piconets, each with

different hopping sequence

IEEE 802.11
Standard Frequenc PHY
y
Layer

Data
Rate

Distance
*

802.11a

5 GHz

OFDM

54 Mbps

50m

802.11b

2.4 GHz

DSSS

11 Mbps

100m

802.11e,
MAC
layer

Offers QoS and backwards compatibility

(in committee)

802.11g

2.4 GHz

OFDM

54 Mbps

* Data rate degrades with distance.

HiperLAN2

www.hiperlan2.com
5 GHz
54 Mbps
OFDM
Automatic frequency allocation
TDMA/TDD (Time Division)
QoS support

Infrared

www.irda.org
Directed line of sight

Diffuse reflective

1m range
Limited to room size

Speed

4 Mbps available
16 Mbps coming
50 Mbps possible

Wireless Networking

Wireless Issues

Distance
2.4 GHz interference

Microwave ovens
Cordless phones

Security
Not a backbone solution

Wireless Personal Area

Networks (WPAN)

802.15.X

Intended for low cost, low distance, low

power personal networks
Often intended for mesh networking

E.g. ZigBee (build on 802.11.4)

Ad-Hoc Mesh Networks

Ad-Hoc networks of wireless sensors and

devices

Benefits:

Easy to build (require no infrastructure to be

available)
Dynamic and mobile
Fault tolerant (usually no single point of failure)

Challenges:

Choice of routing to optimize performance

QoS
Power consumption

Synchronization and collision avoidance

Service Discovery

Self-configuring devices
Device becomes aware of network,
network services and other devices
Automatic, as opposed to manual
(e.g., DHCP, DNS, LDAP)
Several incompatible protocols

Service Discovery
Protocols

Salutation
Service Location Protocol (SLP)
Jini
Universal Plug and Play
Zero-Configuration Networking

Salutation

www.salutation.org
Architecture for looking up,
discovering and accessing services
and information

Salutation

Abstractions for devices, applications,

and services
Current definitions

Printers
Fax machines
Document storage devices
Address book
Schedule
Voice message answer, send, storage
More coming (e.g., display, OS)

Salutation

Capabilities exchange protocol

Service request protocol
Personalities (standardized
protocols for common services)
APIs for information access and
session management

Service Location Protocol

(SLP)

Developed by Internet Engineering

Task Force (IETF)
Applies existing Internet standards
to service discovery problem
www.srvloc.org
www.openslp.org

SLP Agents

User Agent (UA)

Service Agent (SA)

The SLP User Agent is a software entity that is

looking for the location of one or more services.
The SLP Service Agent is a software entity that
provides the location of one or more services.

Directory Agent(DA)

The SLP Directory Agent is a software entity

that acts as a centralized repository for service
location information.

SLP Messages

Service Request (SrvRqst)

Message sent by UAs to SAs and DAs

to request the location of a service.

Service Reply (SrvRply)

Message sent by SAs and DAs in reply

to a SrvRqst. The SrvRply contains
the URL of the requested service.

SLP Messages (cont.)

Service Registration (SrvReg)

Service Deregister (SrvDeReg)

Message sent by SAs to DAs containing

information about a service that is available.
Message sent by SAs to inform DAs that a
service is no longer available.

Service Acknowledge (SrvAck)

A generic acknowledgment that is sent by DAs

to SAs as a reply to SrvReg and SrcDeReg
messages.

SLP Messages (cont.)

Attribute Request (AttrRqst)

Message sent by UAs to request the

attributes of a service.

Attribute Reply (AttrRply)

Message sent by SAs and DAs in reply

to a AttrRqst. The AttrRply contains
the list of attributes that were
requested.

SLP Messages (cont.)

Service Type Request (SrvTypeRqst)

Message sent by UAs to SAs and DAs

requesting the types of services that
are available.

Service Type Reply (SrvTypeRply)

Message by SAs and DAs in reply to a

SrvTypeRqst. The SrvTypeRply contains
a list of requested service types.

SLP Messages (cont.)

DA Advertisement (DAAdvert)

SA Advertisement (SAAdvert)

Message sent by DAs to let SAs and

UAs know where they are.
Message sent by SAs to let UAs know
where they are.

Unicast or multicast messaging

Jini

Service discovery for networks of

Java-enabled devices
www.sun.com/jini
www.jini.org

Jini

Jini

Services
Lookup
Communications

Java-RMI, CORBA,

Security
Leasing
Events

Universal Plug and Play

Microsofts service discovery

approach
IP-based discovery protocols

XML

www.upnp.org
Examples

Universal Plug and Play

Devices

Containers for services

XML description

Services

Actions (i.e., methods)

Control server
Event server

State (i.e., variables)

XML description

Universal Plug and Play

Control points

Retrieve the device description and get a list

of associated services.
Retrieve service descriptions for interesting
services.
Invoke actions to control the service.
Subscribe to the services event source.
Anytime the state of the service changes,
the event server will send an event to the
control point.

UPnP Protocols

Protocols

UDP, TCP/IP, HTTP, XML

Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP)
Generic Event Notification Architecture
(GENA)

Send/receive event notifications using HTTP

over TCP/IP and multicast UDP

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

XML and HTTP for remote procedure calls

UPnP Protocol Stack

UPnP Vendor Defined

UPnP Forum Working Committee Defined

UPnP Device Architecture Defined

SSDP

HTTPMU GENA
(Discovery)

SSDP

HTTPU
(Discovery)

UDP

SOAP
(Control)

HTTP
GENA
(Events)

HTTP
(Description)

TCP

IP

Zero-Configuration
Networking

Zeroconf (www.zeroconf.org)
IETF standard
Objectives

Allocate addresses without a DHCP server

Translate between names and IP addresses
without a DNS server
Find services, like printers, without a directory
server
Allocate IP Multicast addresses without a
MADCAP server

Multicast Address Dynamic Client Allocation Protocol

Zeroconf Protocols

Address autoconfiguration

Configure interfaces with unique

addresses
Determine which subnet mask to use
Detect duplicate address assignment
Cope with collisions

Name-to-address translation

Multicast DNS
Decentralized

Zeroconf Protocols

Service discovery

Service Location Protocol (SLP)

DNS Service Resource Record

Use expanded DNS for service requests

Multicast address allocation

Zeroconf Multicast Address Allocation

Protocol (ZMAAP)

Allocate unique addresses and maintain them over

time
Prevent reallocation of assigned addresses
Be notified of multicast allocation collision