WSN Middleware for Existing Smart Homes

Even though smart home technology is becoming more common, there has been little research about upgrading existing systems; yet, as smart homes become more common, the coexistence of different technologies is to be expected. To study these issues, we have updated our previous smart home architecture to support our service discovery enabled EPIS network protocol. The new middleware is designed to enable future smart home research with WSNs, context based reasoning, automation and positioning, as well as ubiquitous systems. The developed system was evaluated through a real world test case with test habitants. This paper will also discuss problems with general purpose middleware and demonstrate requirements for general purpose architecture from our systems point of view. Our new middleware introduces support for new dynamic WSN system and new APIs supporting service discovery, without compromising existing functionality or rendering existing systems unusable.