Energy efficient multi-function Home Gateway in always-on home environment

Abstract

To provide digital home services without their suspension or any user's waiting, HG(Home Gateway) is to be always in operating state because these home services can be started at any time, by any device and from any network (external or internal home network). Furthermore, some home network devices including HG are required to be ready to operate at any time in digital home environment. We call this characterized digital home network devices as ‘Always-On’ home network devices. The characteristic of always-on in home network environment gives rise to consuming more electrical power to activate these home network devices. In this paper, we propose a novel power control scheme to reduce effectively the power consumed by a HG. The proposed HG is composed of several function blocks which are controlled with separated power. In the proposed HG, we can power down all function blocks except for NPA(Network Protocol Agent) to maintain network connectivity and to monitor any service interrupt from any interior and exterior environments. With the proposed scheme, we can reduce the power consumed excessively by HG characterized with ‘Always-On’.