ARTICLE FEBRUARY 2003

CONTROLLING A NEW TYPE OF GATEWAY

The global market for residential gateways is set to grow strongly as more and more consumers adopt broadband connections. Such gateways will not only enable the sharing of high- speed Internet access among multiple personal computers (PCs) on home networks, but will also allow broadband service providers to offer a range of new value-added services in intelligent home appliances from security systems to energy management. Microelectronics manufacturers and equipment developers are co-operating closely to develop suitable international standards to simplify the introduction of such gateways to meet the needs of both consumers and service providers.

While currently much of the intelligence for controlling and linking the home-based local area network (LAN) to wide area networks is provided by PCs, intelligent gateways are set to take on this task. Such residential gateways have to be much more than broadband modems. In addition to providing routing for the home network, they need to provide secure firewalls and have a high level of functionality to be able to operate with a wide range of wired and wireless PC equipment and multimedia terminals, as well as providing remote access and control for domestic equipment from washing machines and refrigerators to heating, air-conditioning and security equipment.

Several international organisations are already deeply involved in developing suitable standards for such residential gateways and for the remote control tasks also envisaged. The Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGI) was established in the USA in 1999 to provide a forum for the development of open specifications for the delivery of multiple services over wide area networks to local networks and devices, and accelerating the demand for products and services based on those specifications worldwide.

OSGI membership is global. While around half its current 60 members are based in North America, a third are in Europe, with the balance in the Asia/Pacific region. They include service and content providers, infrastructure/network operators, utilities, software developers, gateway and set-top box suppliers, consumer electronics and device suppliers ? both wired and wireless ? and research institutions.

Domestic applications envisaged by OSGI include: provision of information, entertainment and communication; energy management and metering; diagnostics and servicing; safety and security monitoring; and telemedicine and healthcare monitoring. The gateway would consolidate and manage voice, data, control, Internet and multimedia communications, and provides a framework for interoperability between service providers, network operators, service gateway manufacturers and home appliance manufacturers.

Work is also under way within ISO to develop standards in this area. The ISO Home Electronic System (HES) working group (JTC1/SC25/WG1) is working on the residential gateway, broadband home networks and interoperability of domestic applications.

HomeGate is the proposed ISO standard for the residential gateway that would link external networks with home networks. In addition to the translation feature of a communications gateway, HomeGate includes requirements for privacy, security and safety. Firewall provisions in the gateway enforce agreements between service providers and residents on access rights and access times. In addition, the gateway could also be configured to block commands that might place an appliance in an unsafe mode ? for example, turning on an electric cooker hob from a remote location could be prohibited.

The working group is already circulating a standard intended to promote interoperability among home systems applications. Systems covered include lighting control, security and energy management. And the HES Committee is developing a standard for a broadband home network based on the US Versatile Home Network standard EIA-851 but with enhancements in the areas of telephony and security.

In Europe, much of the drive is coming from the domestic appliance manufacturers. Konnex is a new European home automation standard that integrates three existing European standards on home and building automation. It is the result of an alliance between the European Home Systems Association (EHSA), Batibus Club International, and the European Installation Bus Association (EIBA). The new group forms a single and powerful force for standardising home and building networks in Europe and to develop a European standard for a home automation protocol taking into account cost, communications method (RF or power modems), communications content (control, state, and identification variables), and installation ? ideally with a plug-and-play option.

The goal is to take the best aspects of the three existing bus systems to define a common protocol for home and building automation in Europe. This protocol will respect the requirements of each domain covered by the specification: building installation mode, easy installation mode, and automatic installation mode for the home. The combined experience of EHS, EIB and Batibus in the areas of research and product development should help to build a compatible and reliable bus for the next generation of networked products.

With so many different standards under consideration, projects in the MEDEA+ programme have therefore had to be flexible enough to adapt to evolving demands. The MEDEA+ A103 Unified Network Access for eEurope (UNIACCESS) project, for example, set out to provide cheap and fast Internet availability for everyone ? both as a basic prerequisite of an e-business economy, and to open the doors for rapid mass-market penetration.

The main objective of UNIACCESS is to provide a gateway between public networks managed by outside operators, and private networks under the control of the consumer. It is developing cost-effective single-chip controllers for integrated access devices (IADs) supporting home equipment from simple telephones to wireless web terminals, while also making it possible for network providers to ensure compliant behaviour and remote upgradeability. And, as the telephone network is merging more and more with Internet, a second objective is to define a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) functionality and a standard DSLAM architecture.

In the MEDEA+ A202 Future Storage (FUST) project, set to end in the middle of 2003, emphasis has been put on the need to provide innovative system-on-chip (SoC) devices operating with both the optical and magnetic mass storage devices that will be needed for residential gateways. As well as devising common system architectures, the FUST partners are developing prototypes of key components, creating tools for testing and validation, and contributing to the format standardisation debate.

Several of the design methodologies projects in MEDEA+ are also intended to improve flexibility and speed product development in these areas. For example, the MEDEA+ A511 Tools and Methods for IP (TOOLIP) project is intended to cut the time to market for a wide range of SoC devices for use in home appliances and teleworking tools that require ever-higher levels of integration for the implementation of cost-effective novel services such as video-on-demand and remote health monitoring.

TOOLIP addresses European producers' need for a seamless design flow that uses reusable intellectual property (IP) cores, system level modelling and verification techniques as the means of meeting this demand. It proposes IP management methods, tools and standards that will guide the designer in choosing the best cores for any given system.