An extensible platform for smart home services

Providing services to both inhabitants and building operators may overcome the landlord/tenant dilemma with respect to the deployment of current home automation technologies in residences. Pairing this with wireless technologies in particular enables cost-efficient retrofitting of existing buildings. To this end, we introduce an overall system architecture and a residential services gateway essential to it, detailing design considerations aiming for extensibility, cost efficiency, and low power consumption. The system enables both local and centralized services. We also describe how these concepts and their implementations find a first application in an ongoing larger-scale R&D project.