A Design and Implementation of a Stream Gateway Interface of a Home Station for Media Stream Transmission in Heterogeneous Home Networks

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1 A Design and Implementation of a Stream Gateway Interface of a Home Station for Media Stream Transmission in Heterogeneous Home Networks Young-Choong Park, Seung-Ok Lim, Kwang-Sun Choi, Kwang-Mo Jung, *Sang-won Min Ubiquitous Computing Research Center Korea Electronics Technology Institute #8th FL, Good Friend Bank B/D 270-2, Seohyun-Dong, Pundang-Gu Sungman-Si, KyungGi-Do, Korea *Dept. Electronics and Communications Engineering Kwang-woon University, Seoul, Korea Abstract: - Recently, through the development of the computing technologies, there has been the computing paradigm of the new concept, such as the convergence phenomenon among all information devices, ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Also the realization of the home network, which is one of the core solutions of the future computing, has become an important issue. In the paper, we describe technical and service requirements, and the architecture of a large-scale home station which will be the home platform in the next generation. And for the transmission of the media stream such as MPEG-2 TS, DVD, VoD, we design and implement a media stream gateway of a home station and explain the transmission of the media stream by engaging our home station. Key-Words: - Home Station, Home Gateway, Media Stream, Ubiquitous Computing, Home Platform, Stream Gateway Interface 1 Introduction In modern information society, we are confronted by an alteration paradigm called the information technology (IT) revolutions. Recently, Together with the development of the computing technologies, the computing paradigm of the new concept such as the convergence phenomenon among all information devices, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, is rising to the world. Emerging ubiquitous computing technology aims to enhance computer use by making many computers available throughout the physical environment. Computing power and communication capability is embedded in every appliance including digital-tvs, air-conditioners, sensors, and so forth, and users can access the ubiquitously present appliances anywhere and anytime via home networks like IEEE1394, WLAN, PLC, UWB and Zigbee[1]-[4]. Many researchers carefully consider a home network as one of the core infrastructures for the realization of the ubiquitous computing. In the past decade, there have been numerous efforts in home networks. The research and development for home network has entered the stage for a long time but it has not been activated by the hardship of the market formation from an absence of the killer application, a scramble for the technology and an absence of the commercial technology. However, through the development of the national communication infrastructure and the spread of an acknowledgement of our home life, many researchers have proposed detail solution of the interspersed problems. Thus, after two or three years, the technology related to the home network will be a popular issue in IT area. In this paper, we designed, implemented and tested the stream gateway interface (SGI) of a home station (HS) for media stream transmission to handle a media stream such as MPEG-2 TS, DVD, VoD in the heterogeneous home networks. This interface will be referred to as HS_SGI. Also, we explain the transmission of the media stream by HS_SGI. This paper is organized as follow: In Section 2, we explain several requirements and system architectures of the next generation home platform (NGHP) through related works for the future home network. In section 3, we describe the HS_SGI architecture in detail. Sections 4 and 5 present the implementation and test

2 of the HS_SGI, respectively. Finally, we conclude with a brief summary and a description of the future work in Section 6. 2 Related Works In the heterogeneous home network environment, the key element is interoperability among the heterogeneous home network, multimedia processing for home digital services and linking with the ubiquitous computing technology for the coming ubiquitous home. There are several researches to ensure the above key element. Schulzrinne et al. describes the requirements of the global-scalable ubiquitous computing system and is developing such a system based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), with Bluetooth devices for location sensing and Service Location Protocol (SLP) for service discovery. Also they introduce context-aware location information to augment device discovery and user communication called the Columbia InterNet Extensible Multimedia Architecture (CINEMA) infrastructure for multimedia collaboration[1]. Moon, et al. presents the universal home network middleware (UHNM) architecture, which guarantees seamless interoperability among the heterogeneous home network middleware for future home and provides the high-level abstraction and zero-configuration, and makes new services without great effort. Bae, et al proposes a new scheme of the home server platform for providing home digital services by connecting home network and internet. This scheme is an integrated form of a home multimedia server, a home control server and a home information server and has an interface between access networks and home networks, various kinds of wired and wireless home network devices, and multimedia processing modules[3]. As shown in the above studies, there are many researches on in the branch of home gateway and server for a multimedia transmission in the heterogeneous home networks. Therefore, it must be the development of the NGHP in these environments. The NGHP is growing into a shape of the integration station that combines the set-top gateway and multi-service gateway. It puts out the digital convergence media gateway which has the ability of the set-top, broadband modem, home networking and IP streaming. Also it has the set-top box function provided the service such as HDTV, Contents Protection, PVR, Web browsing and Interactive TV and the transmission of the data, voice and entertainment. In order to have the aforementioned function, it is as follow to the several considerations in the NGHP: universal networking platform based on open architecture NGHP needs the data communication among the heterogeneous network and the communication platform of the open architecture supporting many to many communications. multimedia data Switching architecture Since various kinds of stream sources such as audio, video, control, internet and voice present in the Internet world, the switching architecture needs the consideration of a feature such as the data-capability, real-time, delay and the mechanism that can switch according to channels. QoS architecture based on next-generation services Since various kinds of multimedia data present in inside home, NGHP should classify and process the heterogeneous traffics.. common connectivity standardization NGHP needs the modularization of the gateway internal function and network interface and the common connectivity standardization that is able to connect universally. The architecture of the NGHP considering the above proposed features is illustrated in Fig. 1. IP LonWork QoS Any Network Management Integrated Device Switchin g Video Audio Data 1394 UWB Fig. 1 Architecture of the NGHP 3 Architecture of the HS_SGI In this section, we describe the hardware and software of the SGI module specified the transmission of the media stream in NGHP.

3 Fig. 2 shows the internal architecture of SGI module. The core hardware architecture consists of the sub-modules that are the LVDS Prot Interface, SGI field programmable gate array (), CPU Module and Interface. LVDS Port Interface is in charge of a role provisioning MPEG-2 TS packets to the processing module by connecting to the MPEG Test System. We have implemented the HS_SGI Hardware Module using the internal architecture of SGI hardware of Fig. 2 and made the testing board based on it in Fig. 3. or /MAC RS-232 TS Detector Flash DRAM CPU /IRQ Packet Processing Serial-to Buffer -parallel ler LVDS to TTL Gateway Interface Block addr data RX /TXINT TX Address Decoder SPR Register RX Interface Tx Interface Reset signals clk Signal Generator Line Driver HSIP Interface Block Fig. 2 Internal Architecture of SGI Back Plane After it checks Special Purpose Register ( SPR) which is able to check whether the data is send to, Packets are stored in the Tx DPSDRAM and input packets are transmitted to via TS Transfer Module. Through a series of this processing, input packets are sent to HGI from SGI by forwarding the input packets to HGI Module via // Next Input Data // nconforming TS Packet Conforming TS Packet WAIT Start Input MPEG-TS Bandwidth Manager Polling LVDS CP Header Generator BDP Generator SPR Check? TS Transfer Module Check the Rx DP& Confirm Whether the MPEG-2 TS packet inputs or not // CP Header + Payload(MPEG-TS) // Making the BDP Packet // Multicast & Broadcast Send // To board the Interface Fig. 4 SGI Algorithm Confirm Whether the is ready to receive the data or not LVDS Port Interface SGI Interface CPU Board (MPC860) Fig. 3 HS SGI Hardware Module We are implementing the parts of bandwidth manager[4] and TS transfer module mentioned above for one to one test system. After this, we are going to complement these modules for the processing of the media stream in many to many test system[6,7].. Until now, we described the SGI Algorithm for efficiently the processing of the media stream. In section 4 Implementation of the HS_SGI, we delineate the detail operation procedure for transmitting the media data using this algorithm[5]. We have been exemplified the SGI Algorithm in order to be operating the module. Fig. 4 shows the operation processing of the SGI Algorithm. The system initialization processing is progressed by booting the SGI module. SGI Module confirms Whether the MPEG-TS packet is transferred through the loading of Polling LVDS module by checking the Rx DP. After it makes sure the input of MPEG-2 TS packet from MPEG Test System, Input data is transmitted to the Protocol (CP) header generator and BDP(Buffer Description Protocol) for sending the input data to HGI(Home Gateway Interface) Module through the.. 4 Implementation and Test of the HS_SGI 4.1 Implementation of the HS_SGI In this section, we embodied the SGI designed above in practice and tested a module verification for sending on media data via the data scenario ( SGI->HSIP->HGI ). MPEG-2 TS packet produced from AD953 MPEG Test System is transmitted to SGI Module via LVDS interface. Embedded SGI in

4 SGI internal module and CPU board using MPC860 manages the processing of Module transmitted. MPEG Generator SGI Line Board MPC860 Board LVDS Interface Sgi_App Interface Interface Hgi_App HGI Line Board MPC860 Board Ethernet Interface Fig. 5 Data Transmission Architecture between SGI and HGI Fig. 6 shows the detail operation procedure using the SGI module. The data produced from MPEG TS generator is encapsulated to CP packets in the application software of the MPC 860 dotter board that is the CPU board of the HS SGI board and stored in the Rx DP. Thus it makes the BDP using the address of the Rx DP that is stored the header information and data of the CP packet and the created BDP is sent to the of the HS SGI, after setting the RxRDY register into 1. When RxRDY register is set into 1, HS SGI sends Request (CB_REG) signal to the HSIP s. And HSIP s sends Grant (CB_GNT) signal, which means the Admission, to HS SGI. According to get the bus admission into common bus arbitration method, HS SGI can send the data via the common bus. The HS SGI received CB_GNT signal from HSIP s sends BDP HSIP s via common bus. After the packet processing, HSIP s sends Send (CB_SND) signal and Receive (CB_RCV) signal to HS SGI and HS HGI respectively-cb_snd means the packet sending signal and CB_RCV means the packet receiving signal. HS SGI transmits CP packets stored in Rx DP to the Tx DP of the HS HGI based on CB_SND and CB_RCV. HS HGI generates the TXINT signal and notifies transmitted the packet in the Tx DP of the HS HGI to the application software of the MPC 860 board. After setting the TxRDY register into 1, HS SGI s is able to receive the data. Fig. 6 SGI Data Transfer Flow 4.2 Test of the HS_SGI Fig. 7 Data Transmission Test-bed Fig. 7 shows the test-bed for data transmission among the heterogeneous interfaces. It presents that packets are send to HGI board from SGI board in our home station. MPEG-2 TS packets produced from a MPEG Generator are send to HGI board, it is send to PC#2 connected the interface of HGI via Home Station Internal Protocol (HSIP) and HGI. We have implemented the core module using VxWorks as operating system and tested the core module with several end-devices using various operating system such as Linux, Windows. Fig. 8 shows the testing sight of the home station in our lab. It presents a media stream transmission sight through the SGI module of the home station.

5 MPEG-2 TS Generator LVDS Port Interface SGI Module Fig. 8 HS SGI Test Suite 5 Conclusion and Future works [4] A. Croll, E. Packman, Managing Bandwidth: deploying QoS In Enterprise Networks, Prentice Hall PTR, [5] N. Chaddha, A Software Only Scalable Video Delivery System for Multimedia Applications over Heterogeneous Network, International Conf. on Image Processing, Vol. 3, 23~26, October [6] B. Guillaume, R. Kumar, B. Helmut, and S. Thomas, Methods for Bridging a HAVi Subnetwork and a UPnP Subnetwork and Device for Implementing Methods, Thomson Multimedia, [7] E. Tokunaga, H. Ishikawa, M. Kurahashi, Y. Morimoto, and T. Nakajima, A Framework for Connecting Home Computing Middleware, ICDCSW 02, In this paper, we have designed and implemented the SGI module in the next-generation HS for transmission of a media stream like MPEG-2 TS packets. Also, the operation of transmission of multimedia data over HS_SGI has been explained. Since we developed the prototype related to HS_SGI, we have ability to develop advanced functions related to the SGI module, such bandwidth manager, multicast and broadcast and so forth. In the near future, according to the diffusion of the ubiquitous computing technology and home network technologies, users will require the ability to access ubiquitously present appliances anywhere and anytime. Thus, the end-to-end connectivity between appliances inside home is possible where all information transported will be multimedia data. References: [1] H. Schulzrinne, X. Wu, S. Sidiroglou, S. Berger, Ubiquitous Computing in Home Networks, IEEE Communications Magazine, vember [2] K. Moon, Y. Lee, Y. Son and C. Kim, Universal Home Network Middleware Guaranteeing Seamless Interoperability among the Heterogeneous Home Network Middleware, IEEE Transaction on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 49,. 3, August, [3] C. Bae, J. Yoo, K. Kang, Y. Choe and J. Lee, Home Server for Home Digital Service Environments, IEEE Transaction on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 49,. 4, vember, 2003.