TEAHA Project: Advancing Interoperable Global Home Platforms

1. Date : 14 Oct 2004Location : BrusselsAuthor : Telefónica File : TEAHA - COPRAS The TEAHA Activities in Standardization [Telefónica ]

2. Project Objective • Work with the AV world to specify open, interoperable and seamless global home platforms • Ensuring interworking across the overall home network platforms • From an heterogeneous network perspective • From a multisector perspective • White goods • Energy mgt • Security/safety • Lighting • Elderly and Disabled • Audio-Video

3. Input to Framework • TAHI Open Architecture • methodologies for service delivery • guidelines on how to construct and deploy platforms for pervasive delivery of services • HUCL: Home Uniform Control Language™ • ("HUCL is a trademark belonging to Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV“) • suitable for low bandwidth networks such as Zigbee • suitable as common intermediate language • suitable for control • compressed XML • CECED Home Appliance Interoperability Network • specification from household appliance sector covering 9 appliances (washing machines, oven, refrigerator) • network independent approach • mapping on top of EHS, Lonworks, KNX

4. TEAHA aims • The initiative’s main objectives are to develop: • - An open, secure framework for seamless interoperability and interworking in a global home platform (TEAHA Taxonomy, Service Discovery Features, Security..) • - An advanced low-cost RF solution • - An ultra-low cost powerline solution supporting this framework • - Advanced residential gateway subsystems

5. Potential Standards Bodies with which to contribute (preliminary ideas). • Activities at OSGi: • Definition of global device handling. TEAHA intends to define a taxonomy to have a uniform way for managing devices, regardless the type of device and the network the device is attached to. • Promotion of Standardization of API for home applications. • Activities together with ZigBee alliance: • Bring new market sectors into ZigBee by encouraging TEAHA members to participate • Promotion & development of a ZigBee profile for White Goods • Development of conformance test cases for the white goods profile

6. Other groups In fact, since the TEAHA Project has started, the specification of an open and secure home platform allowing the seamless interoperability of the widest range of appliances and equipment is being seen as more and more essential by all market players of the connected home field worldwide, in order to really allow the integration of technologies and services in home environments. A number of working groups and alliances have thus reinforced or started their activities: o The Application Home Initiative (TAHI), o the CENELEC‘s Smarthouse initiative, o the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), formerly called the Digital Home Working Group (DHWG), o the Japanese Ubiquitous Open Forum Platform (UOPF), o the Chinese Intelligent Grouping & Resource Sharing (IGRS), o the recent Korean, Japanese and Chinese alliance on Homenetworking,

7. TEAHA main deliverables. • D1.2 – Teaha Middleware framework specification -A TEAHA middleware framwork specification which is a network independent, and includes advanced services discovery features and advanced security mechanism. • D2.3 RF components for seamless interworking -An RF (eg. Zigbee) module suited to power supplied appliances integrating TEAHA middleware • D3.2 Ultra low –cost powerline components -An ultra-low cost power line solution adequate for any electrical household appliance. It consist of a prototype physically separating the network communication from the device, by including very simple dedicated connections from the device to the network communication system. • D4.2 Design of residential gateway components -Description of the designed system components including (end to end system and components (residential gateway, service provider platform, Aggregator)

8. What do we mean by the TEAHA Taxonomy? Taxonomy • “A system of classification of entities into groups or categories, with a structure that indicates the relationships between them”. What TEAHA entities do we need a Taxonomy for? • Appliances / Devices and their characteristics / services • Controllers • Remote Services • ‘Actors’ (service providers / consumers etc.) ? Why do we need a TEAHA Taxonomy? • To group (or ‘cluster’) TEAHA entities according to common characteristics (attributes and services), in order to simplify description and interworking • To express ‘inheritance’ relationships between the groups (resulting in a semi-hierarchical structure) • To provide a set of high level common characteristics that allows interworking between entities on different networks, protocols and device description mechanisms • To express common and individual characteristics at all levels of the hierarchy • To allow the establishment and control of interworking between TEAHA entities based on the above

9. Example of Overall Taxonomy • Cluster : Household appliance • Device • Washing machine • Service • Pay-per-wash • Cluster : Energy Management • Device • Electricity Meter • Service • Load management • Cluster : Multimedia • ...