Functional architecture of Mobile Gateway and home server for virtual home services

Abstract

With the progress of portable appliances such as cell phone and handheld PC, it can be foreseen the popularization of Personal Area Network (PAN) and the diversification of services that are based on Personal Mobile Gateway (PMG). Although inter-operability among home appliances reached a service stage, researches about virtual home services and middlewares for a new small scale network such as PAN are at an early stage. Network service/connection methods, terminal control schemes, and middlewares which are used in the traditional home networks must be enhanced to accommodate PMG-based PAN. In this paper, we propose an integrated virtual home network platform that guarantees seamless connections between home network and PAN. We also analyze the proposed indispensable functions and presents functions that should be added to the existent home gateway or the home server. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.