Future Home Networks Research Articles

Complexity reduction of ordinary kriging algorithm for 3D REM design

This work has investigated the feasibility of using cluster ordinary kriging (OK) interpolation to speed up indoor three-dimensional (3D) radio environment map (REM) generation time than the conventional OK-based REM generation time in two-dimensional (2D) and 3D ways mainly. The REM has been generated on the real-time received signal strength (RSS) dataset of an ultra-high frequency active television (TV) channel to explore TV grey space (TVGS) volume for cognitive access inside a six-storied office building. It can support future home networks for high-speed data-based applications. The optimal number of clusters has been found at K=4 on both 3D and 2D ways through distortion % deviation analysis. The maximum distortion % deviation = 88.74%, has been found at K=4. The exponential semivariogram model has been selected as the best-fit model after a thorough cross-validated comparative analysis of the clustered and non-clustered OK algorithms separately on residual squared error (RSE), root mean square error (RMSE) and the ratio of expected variance (EV) and kriging variance (KV) results. The RSE and RMSE are minimum, and the EV: KV ratio is in between 0.95 to 1.05 for the exponential model. Significant observation of the analysis of the results shows that cluster OK algorithms outperform conventional OK algorithms of corresponding domains on time complexity. A comparative study on RMSE, correlation coefficient (CC), and relative recovery error (RRE) show that cluster OK improves the accuracy. Cluster 2D and 3D OK-based detected TVGS volume is 13450 m3, 5.634% of the whole building volume.

Datanet: Deep Learning Based Encrypted Network Traffic Classification in SDN Home Gateway

A smart home network will support various smart devices and applications, e.g., home automation devices, E-health devices, regular computing devices, and so on. Most devices in a smart home access the Internet through a home gateway (HGW). In this paper, we propose a software-defined-network (SDN)-HGW framework to better manage distributed smart home networks and support the SDN controller of the core network. The SDN controller enables efficient network quality-of-service management based on real-time traffic monitoring and resource allocation of the core network. However, it cannot provide network management in distributed smart homes. Our proposed SDN-HGW extends the control to the access network, i.e., a smart home network, for better end-to-end network management. Specifically, the proposed SDN-HGW can achieve distributed application awareness by classifying data traffic in a smart home network. Most existing traffic classification solutions, e.g., deep packet inspection, cannot provide real-time application awareness for encrypted data traffic. To tackle those issues, we develop encrypted data classifiers (denoted as DataNets) based on three deep learning schemes, i.e., multilayer perceptron, stacked autoencoder, and convolutional neural networks, using an open data set that has over 200 000 encrypted data samples from 15 applications. A data preprocessing scheme is proposed to process raw data packets and the tested data set so that DataNet can be created. The experimental results show that the developed DataNets can be applied to enable distributed application-aware SDN-HGW in future smart home networks.

High-Speed Integrated Visible Light Communication System: Device Constraints and Design Considerations

Visible light communications (VLC) has the potential to play a major part in future smart home and next generation communication networks. There is significant ongoing work to increase the achievable data rates using VLC, to standardize it and integrate it within existing network infrastructures. The future of VLC systems depends on the ability to fabricate low cost transceiver components and to realize the promise of high data rates. This paper reports the design and fabrication of integrated transmitter and receiver components. The transmitter uses a two dimensional individually addressable array of micro light emitting diodes ( $\mu\text{LEDs}$ )and the receiver uses an integrated photodiode array fabricated in a CMOS technology. A preliminary result of a MIMO system implementation operating at a data rate of 1 Gbps is demonstrated. This paper also highlights the challenges in achieving highly parallel data communication along with the possible bottlenecks in integrated approaches.

Performance Analysis of 60GHz Cooperative Communication System with Directional Transmission

60GHz wireless communication is a promising technology for multi-gigabit communication in future home networks. It brings possibility of achieving in-door high-definition multimedia applications with high-speed and low-delay experience. However, to maintain the network connectivity with 60GHz links, which are susceptible to propagation and penetration losses, is a major challenge. The quality and robustness of 60GHz links can be effectively improved by employing relay nodes or cooperative nodes in the network. In this paper, taking into consideration the directional transmission character of 60GHz system, we conduct performance analysis and simulations for the 60GHz cooperative communication system. Two cooperative forwarding approaches are analyzed and compared, and the optimal position of the cooperative relay node is proposed.

RFID-based Secure Communication for Smart Device in Future Home Network Environment

RFID-based Secure Communication for Smart Device in Future Home Network Environment

Advances in standards and testbeds for cognitive radio networks: Part II

This article describes three use cases that are of interest to telecommunications operators: future home networks, street coverage, and broadband access to rural and underserved premises. The authors also present results of modeling and experimental trials, and identify a number of technical and business challenges as well.

Wireless service provision in TV white space with cognitive radio technology: A telecom operator's perspective and experience

Currently there is a very fundamental change happening in spectrum regulation, possibly the most fundamental ever in its history. This is the enabling of spectrum sharing, where primary (licensed) users of the spectrum, are forced to allow sharing with secondary users, who use license-exempt equipment. Such sharing is free for the secondary users, subject to the condition that they do not cause harmful interference to the primary users. The first instance of such sharing is occurring with the UHF digital TV spectrum, in what is commonly called TV white space. Regulators such as the FCC in the United States and Ofcom in the United Kingdom have indicated that other spectrum will follow suit. Cognitive radio is an enabling technology that allows such sharing. Following recent rulings by FCC and Ofcom and the emergence of a series of related industry standards, CR operation in TVWS is moving from the research domain towards implementation and commercialization, with use-cases that are of interest to telecom operators. In this article we describe three such use cases: future home networks, coverage of the street from inside buildings, and broadband access to rural and underserved premises. We present results of modeling and trials of technical feasibility, undertaken by the Innovate and Design team at BT. Based on our experience we draw conclusions regarding the feasibility and commercial importance of these use cases, and identify some of the remaining technical and commercial challenges.

On Using TPM for Secure Identities in Future Home Networks

Security should be integrated into future networks from the beginning, not as an extension. Secure identities and authentication schemes are an important step to fulfill this quest. In this article, we argue that home networks are a natural trust anchor for such schemes. We describe our concept of home networks as a universal point of reference for authentication, trust and access control, and show that our scheme can be applied to any next generation network. As home networks are no safe place, we apply Trusted Computing technology to prevent the abuse of identities, i.e., identity theft.

Cross-Layer Resource Allocation Scheme Under Heterogeneous Constraints for Next Generation High Rate WPAN

In the next generation wireless networks, the growing demand for new wireless applications is accompanied with high expectations for better quality of service (QoS) fulfillment especially for multimedia applications. Furthermore, the coexistence of future unlicensed users with existing licensed users is becoming a challenging task in the next generation communication systems to overcome the underutilization of the spectrum. A QoS and interference aware resource allocation is thus of special interest in order to respond to the heterogeneous constraints of the next generation networks. In this work, we address the issue of resource allocation under heterogeneous constraints for unlicensed multiband ultra-wideband (UWB) systems in the context of Future Home Networks, i.e. the wireless personal area network (WPAN). The problem is first studied analytically using a heterogeneous constrained optimization problem formulation. After studying the characteristics of the optimal solution, we propose a low-complexity suboptimal algorithm based on a cross-layer approach that combines information provided by the PHY and MAC layers. While the PHY layer is responsible for providing the channel quality of the unlicensed UWB users as well as their interference power that they cause on licensed users, the MAC layer is responsible for classifying the unlicensed users using a two-class based approach that guarantees for multimedia services a high-priority level compared to other services. Combined in an efficient and simple way, the PHY and MAC information present the key elements of the aimed resource allocation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides a good tradeoff between the QoS satisfaction of the unlicensed applications with hard QoS requirements and the limitation of the interference affecting the licensed users.

An efficient data gathering routing protocol in sensor networks using the integrated gateway node

In the future ubiquitous home network, sensors will collect various home environment data in the home. Since the sensor nodes are equipped with small, often irreplaceable, batteries with limited power capacity, it is essential that the network be energy-efficient in order to maximize its lifetime. Our study, described in this paper, was divided into two classes: the primary class was to set a gateway-selection level and the secondary class was to propose an offer of a home automation using a routing technique centered on a sensor network to set a flooding level. The proposed scheme is to increase the life time of the sensor network with the integrated gateway node. The IGN increases the life time of the network to integrate the multiple gateway nodes.

Cooperative Communications in Future Home Networks

The basic idea behind cooperative communications is that mobile terminals collaborate to send data to each other. This effectively adds diversity in the system and improves the overall performance. In this paper, we investigate the potential gains of cooperative communication in future home networks. We derive analytical expressions for the error probability of binary phase shift keying (BPSK) signals over Nakagami-m fading channels in a multi relay communication network. Following to the analytical study, we analyze the contribution of cooperative relaying to the 60GHz network connectivity through simulations using a realistic indoor environment model. We compare the performance of different relay configurations under variable obstacle densities. We show that a typical 60GHz indoor network should employ either a multi-relay configuration or a single-relay configuration with a smart relay selection mechanism to achieve acceptable outage rates. In the use of multiple-relay configuration, both analytical and simulation studies indicate that increasing the number of cooperative relays does not improve the system performance significantly after a certain threshold.

Admission region of triple-play services in wireless home networks

A heterogeneous wired and wireless network architecture is considered for home networks to support Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), voice, and data, the so-called triple-play services. To satisfy the quality of service (QoS) requirements for different traffic classes, class-based queueing (CBQ) is deployed at home gateways and routers. To estimate the network capacity and decide on an appropriate resource management scheme, we develop an analytical framework to quantify the maximum number of IPTV connections that can be supported with guaranteed QoS over wired and multi-hop wireless networks. We extend the fluid-flow model to capture both the burstiness of IPTV sources and the time-varying characteristics of multi-hop wireless paths. Heterogeneous traffic and CBQ are considered in the model. Simulation results over wired and multi-hop wireless paths are given which validate the analysis. The results presented provide important guidelines for the planning of future home networks for triple-play services. They also provide important insights into how to efficiently support heterogeneous traffic with stringent QoS requirements over wireless and wired networks.

Home networking at 60 GHz: challenges and research issues

The recent developments in CMOS technology are about opening a new exciting door to affordable 60-GHz radio applications. One promising application area for 60-GHz radio is home networks in which there is an increasing demand for multi-gigabit wireless networking. The research efforts so far have generally focused on utilizing the 60-GHz band for point-to-point communication by addressing its physical aspects like propagation characteristics and channel models. The issues of 60-GHz networking at the system level have not been adequately considered. In this paper, the challenges and the research issues of 60-GHz networking are reviewed from the system-level perspective. We present them in the context of wireless local area networks for future home networks with discussions on some possible solutions for the introduced challenges.

An Admission Control Scheme Based on Online Measurement for VBR Video Streams Over Wireless Home Networks

This paper presents an online measurement-based admission control scheme on the basis that the aggregate VBR video traffic is lognormally distributed. The proposed scheme consists of two components: measurement process and admission decision. The measurement process applies a linear Kalman filter to estimate statistical parameters of aggregate VBR video traffic. The estimated statistical parameters are used to calculate the effective bandwidth for admission decision. Variable bit rate (VBR) video traffic with high data rate is expected to occupy a dominant proportion of bandwidth for future wireless broadband home networks. To guarantee quality-of-service (QoS) of such VBR video streams, while achieving a high level of channel utilization, an efficient admission control scheme is urgently required, especially for emerging wireless multimedia indoor services, such as HDTV, online video game, etc. The proposed scheme is computationally efficient and accurate without much prior traffic information. Simulation results verify its effectiveness and show that it performs well for both a small number of connections and a large number of connections.

Exclusive-Region Based Scheduling Algorithms for UWB WPAN

With the capability of supporting very high data rate services in a short range, ultra-wideband (UWB) technology is appealing to multimedia applications in future wireless personal area networks (WPANs) and broadband home networks. However, the WPAN medium access control (MAC) protocol in IEEE 802.15.3 standard was originally designed for narrowband communication networks, without considering any specific features of UWB. In this paper, we explore the unique characteristics of UWB communications from which a sufficient condition for scheduling concurrent transmissions in UWB networks is derived: concurrent transmissions can improve the network throughput if all senders are outside the exclusive regions of other flows. We also study the optimal exclusive region size for a UWB network where devices are densely and uniformly located. Since the optimal scheduling problem for peer-to-peer concurrent transmissions in a WPAN is NP-hard, the induced computation load for solving the problem may not be affordable to the network coordinator, commonly a normal UWB device with limited computational power. We propose two simple heuristic scheduling algorithms with polynomial time complexity. Extensive simulations with random network topology demonstrate that, by exploiting the unique characteristics of UWB communications and allowing concurrent transmissions appropriately, the proposed exclusive-region based scheduling algorithms can significantly increase the network throughput.

Cross-layer Design for Fast TCP ACK-Clocking over WiMedia UWB Networks

The WiMedia UWB technology is a viable solution to enable high-throughput multimedia delivery in future wireless multimedia home networks. However, due to the delay of TCP ACK-clocking, the throughput of TCP connections can be severely degraded and the quality that home users may experience could be substandard. To solve this problem, we propose a cross-layer Fast TCP ACK- Clocking (FTAC) scheme, where a normal MAC ACK conveys a TCP ACK in both contention-based and reservation-based MAC protocols. With FT AC, it is shown by simulation that the utilization of UWB link by TCP is greatly enhanced and the TCP throughput approaches to that of UDP, which could be the upper bound of the utilization of UWB links by higher layers.

Wireless Mesh Networks for In-Home IPTV Distribution

IPTV is considered to be the next killer application. A key, challenging issue is in-home IPTV distribution with affordable deployment cost and sufficient flexibility, scalability, and reliability. In this article, we first survey and compare the emerging wired and wireless communication technologies for broadband home networks, including transmission over power lines, phone lines, coaxial cables or Ethernet cables, and IEEE 802.1 In, ultra wideband and millimeter wave wireless technologies. Considering these promising candidates for future broadband home networks, we propose three wireless mesh network architectures. These enable consumers to enjoy anywhere, anytime IPTV services without rewiring their homes. We compare the cost, reliability, and scalability of the three architectures. We further study their admission regions for IPTV, that is, the number of IPTV connections that can be supported simultaneously with satisfactory QoS. Analytical and simulation results with H.264 HDTV sources over wired, single hop wireless, and multi-hop wireless paths are given. These results can provide important guidelines for future broadband home network design supporting IPTV services.

A ubiquitous IAs access platform (UIAP) over UPnP

AbstractThe radical development in information technology makes the information appliances (IAs) able to interact and share information using the universal plug and play (UPnP) protocol. Inter‐IA interactions that involve more than one IA do exist in the future digital home network. Nowadays, inter‐IA interactions are developed by system and service providers and are fixed. It is difficult for users to customize their inter‐IA interactions. In this paper, we propose the service interaction script (SIS) language, which is a flow control language for users to customize their own inter‐IA interactions through the Web interfaces in the UPnP home network. Domain‐specific statements for the development of the inter‐IA interactions in SIS are (i) IA access statement, (ii) parallel statement and (iii) interaction event handling statement. On the other hand, the ubiquitous IAs access platform (UIAP) that allows users to use handheld devices to access the IA base on the UPnP protocol is also developed. UIAP provides the Web interfaces, i.e. (i) control panel and (ii) interaction customization panel, for users to access IAs remotely using handheld devices with or without the UPnP capability. The interaction customization panel contains (i) an easy mode and (ii) an advanced mode for users to customize inter‐IA interactions defined by themselves through the Web interfaces using SIS. In the easy mode, inter‐IA interaction customizations are achieved through the Web graphical user interface components and translated into SIS programs; in the advanced mode, users can write SIS programs directly. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Utilising IPv6 over VPN to enhance home service connectivity

PurposeThe number of home networks, as well as the number of services and hosts in them, is increasing. Often home users cannot get public IPv4 network allocations from service providers and are forced to use network address translation (NAT) and port forwarding to solve connectivity issues to the different home services. This paper seeks to introduce a secure connectivity solution utilising both IPv6 and IPv6 transition mechanisms in cooperation with existing virtual private network (VPN) solutions.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed solution to avoid route conflicts and other problems with private IPv4 address space collisions is to utilise 6to4, an IPv6 transition mechanism, to obtain routable IPv6 network addresses first for the home network and services and then, to utilise the same IPv6 network for connectivity by bridging it over a VPN connection to the mobile terminal.FindingsThe paper finds that the adoption of this solution and these technologies will depend on how useful they are seen by vendors or service providers and included in their products. Regular vendors and service providers probably want to wait until there is a greater customer need. On the other hand, customers do not know about the possibilities before they are shown to them in practice. The best approach to this challenge is to find a cooperating vendor, or even better, a service provider willing to develop the concept further and to integrate it into the devices and services they are already offering.Originality/valueThe technologies for enhancing home service connectivity are already available. In the proof‐of‐concept implementation the paper has shown that all these components can be integrated and utilised to build home routers for present and future home networks. The technical disadvantages and challenges are solvable with further work and the whole concept is ready to be turned into products and services. As indicated in the paper, one of the issues for further work is to find and convince a vendor or service provider to integrate the proposed solution in their home router.

A base-station centric data gathering routing protocol in sensor networks useful in home automation applications

In the future ubiquitous home network, sensors will collect various home environment data in the home. Since the sensor nodes are equipped with small, often irreplaceable, batteries with limited power capacity, it is essential that the network be energy-efficient in order to maximize its lifetime. Our study, described in this paper, was divided into two classes: the primary class was to set a power-based level and the secondary class was to propose an offer of a home automation using a routing technique centered on a sensor network to set a flooding level. The proposed scheme divides the home into areas such as rooms and locates the WENs in each area. The WENs collect data from sensors and deliver the data to the home base station only. Sensors deliver the data to the WENs or the home base station through the sensor with the stronger power. Performance results show that the proposed scheme is more, efficient with a wireless home network.