Integration of an “Environments for Aging”-Platform in SOHO-Routers

The demographic structure is changing in many countries which leads to “aging societies”. This introduces several new challenges, e.g., for provisioning of healthcare. Many research projects try to address some of the upcoming technical issues. In this paper we delineate the integration of a complex OSGi-based “Multi-Services-Home-Platform (MSHP)”, designed for versatile healthcare and monitoring issues in a domestic area, and a common Small Office / Home Office (SOHO) broadband access router. Besides the presentation of several use cases to explain the functional requirements of the platform, a closer look on the technical requirements is provided. Many of the features and interfaces a MHSP requires are already present on modern router platforms and with growing processing capacity of embedded systems even the demand of heavier computation jobs can be manageable. In such modular systems, based on standard hard- and software, current techniques and research topics like Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) or “new” protocols like IPv6 can easily be implemented and brought to the end-user, by combining the worlds of healthcare and consumer Internet access in one platform.