Convergence of broadcasting and communication in home network using an EPON-based home gateway and overlay

Home network systems including a home gateway are expected to facilitate the convergence of broadcasting and communication services to complement the ubiquitous computing and services. We focus on supporting the convergence of broadcasting and communication in home network systems with an Ethernet passive optical network (EPON)-based home gateway. We propose a new architecture that integrates broadcasting and data services in a home network. For this architecture, we use an overlay transport mechanism in access network and IP multicast techniques of the Internet group management protocol (IGMP) and IGMP snooping in a home network. We also detail a set of mechanisms and procedures for a home broadcasting service through the home gateway system. Our new scheme is composed of three parts: a) an overlay transmission model of video broadcasting signals (satellite and/or cable TV) and Internet data, b) to select a specific video broadcasting channel and video broadcasting stream into IP multicast packets in tuner/conversion module using multiple tuner system and c) to transfer the converted IP multicast packets to L2 switch of home gateway's core module and to send them out to target port(s) by L2 multicast using IGMP snooping.