Portable wireless appliances: access point for home nets

Powerline and wireless physical-layer technologies allow reliable data transfer between multimedia appliances at faster data rates than ever before. And with even simple 8-bit microcontrollers now able to implement the Internet TCP/IP protocol, a standard software glue for heterogeneous home networks is emerging.

While early attempts at home networking focused on peer-to-peer device connectivity, that approach relies on a very rigid device model. Emerging trends suggest that heterogeneous networks work more effectively using a flexible device model. In essence, each device tells its story to a central "broker" device, which then determines how the device and its accompanying services should be presented to potential client devices on the network.

The truly mobile computer has appeared recently in the guise of wearable computers and most recently in the form of handheld pocket PCs. The latter are about to merge with the mobile phone to provide users with the ultimate in personal computing and communications technology.

In the context of these new technological developments, researchers at the Consumer Electronics Research Group (CERG) have been exploring how end users might manage and control next-generation home networks. In the past year, much of the focus of the group's research has been on experimenting with server-based infrastructures to provide services to users of a wireless home network. User access to this wireless services infrastructure is from a PDA, a mobile phone or even a wearable appliance.

Research has shown that modern PDAs and mobile phones will evolve into wireless data-access and entertainment control terminals. At the same time, much of the computing power accessed by consumers in the home will reside on a central home entertainment and communications server. That server will control most consumer electronics systems in the home. It could also provide a useful range of home automation services and regulate access to broadband Internet services.

CERG believes that data- and service-access terminals will in most cases be relatively simple devices, serving only to provide a user interface to the main service infrastructure supported on the server.

In this scenario, a common unified home services interface (UHSI) to the home server is shared by a home PC and other user access devices in the home. This could be viewed as a thin-client philosophy for home networks.

Our researchers found it necessary to reexamine the design philosophy of current user interfaces within the home environment. The plethora of user interfaces for today's consumer electronic appliances is astounding; almost every appliance has its own proprietary remote control. Programmable remote controls can provide a partial solution but may prove difficult and confusing themselves to the consumer.

A key goal of the ongoing research at CERG is to examine how a UHSI might be implemented in a practical home network based on today's technologies. To that end, we have been impressed with the capabilities and functionality of Soap/XML-based Web interfaces for consumer appliances. Research has also focused on the potential of voice-activated interfaces for home services.

There are a number of industry initiatives that are relevant to our work. The Open Systems Gateway Initiative (OSGi) and the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) organization are prominent examples.

CERG has examined a number of these initiatives as a basis for our own work. Where practical, it has been our intention to adopt and use such industry standards but to add complementary enhancements where those standards prove lacking.

The multimedia capabilities of today's desktop PCs have made it easy to prototype what we consider will become a typical home network. A central server can provide broadcast TV channels, pay-per-view and digital TV, including Dolby 5.1 capabilities. The server also offers IEEE 1394, Ethernet and 802.11b network connectivity.

Wireless access devices can connect to the home network via a UHS server that contains a registry of available services in a local database. Consumer appliances that are connected to the home network should register with the UHS server in order to make their services and functionality available via the UHS interface on a handheld client.

We have used Soap/XML to implement our initial prototypes and adopted, where appropriate, the conventions and XML templates outlined as part of the UPnP industry standard. One novel aspect of our work has focused on adapting UPnP to support an enhanced UHSI with a particular emphasis on voice activation support.

End users will gain access to any UHS services, via the local UHSI, as soon as their handheld or wearable computers connect to the local home network. When they browse to the address of the UHS server, they will see a menu of available services rather than a list of devices or home appliances. Selecting a service will then provide the user with a menu enabling the different capabilities of a particular service.

In addition to the browser-menu interface, we provide a generic, device-independent, voice-activated interface. This is significant because it allows hand-free operation and provides users a more natural and relaxed means to control their home environment. For example, they can turn on the TV and select channels using spoken commands ("TV on"; "Channel 106 please") without burying their heads in their mobile phone or PDA screen.

Because the main voice recognition is implemented on the server, the interface can run on practically any handheld, PDA or phone-like appliance that implements TCP/IP and provides a microphone to enable voice capture. Alternatively, when a more complex service has to be selected, the user has access via the UHSI to the full graphic capabilities of a handheld data terminal if required.

This article will be presented at ICCE in a paper titled "Web Interface is Tomorrow's Remote Control for TV ."