Assistive Technologies in Smart Homes

Home Networking Technologies: Overview

As mentioned in the previous section, the introduction of ICT into the residential environment has added a new layer of mediation between a house and its residents, and is likely to expedite the adaptation process outlined above. In this section, we describe networking technologies, as one of the technologies that are integral to smart homes.

Standardized technologies related to home networks are depicted in Figure 1. The technologies are classified into the two axes. The horizontal axis represents home appliance categorization and the three categories are depicted in Figure 1. The first category includes audio/visual appliances such as DVD recorders and digital TVs, which need high-speed connections. The second category is that of information appliances which need medium-speed connections. Lastly, the third category encompasses major appliances such as refrigerators and air-conditioners, which are capable of working on low-speed connections.

Figure 1.

Overview of standardized technologies related to the home network

The vertical axis in Figure 1 represents the layer structure of the technologies. The upper-most layer corresponds to the applications layer; the lower-most layer lies just above the layer of physical communication. The communication layers in Figure 1 include the general networking technologies standardized in IEEE, ITU, etc. In the application layers in Figure 1, the technologies tend to depend on each application, especially for CODEC.