Inter-MAC green path selection for heterogeneous networks

Gigabit home networks represent a key technology to make the Future Internet success a reality. Consumers will require networks to be simple to install, without the need of any new wire and with green consideration. To make this network ubiquitous, seamless and robust, a technology independent MAC layer will ensure its global control and provide connectivities to any number of devices the user wishes to connect to it in any room. In order to make this vision comes true, substantial progress is required in the fields of protocol design and in systems architectures. For this goal, we introduce a new convergence layer denoted inter-MAC, which provides a common infrastructure to the home network. Among the inter-MAC functionalities, we focused our interest on the path selection mechanism including the green aspect. To improve quality of service, reduce energy consumption and radiofrequency devices number, we define a new path selection protocol based on several metrics. We present some preliminary results obtained on an experimental testbed.