A proposal of cloud-based home network system for multi-vendor services

A home network system (HNS) provides value-added services for home users by networking house-hold appliances and sensors. In the conventional architecture, the HNS appliances and services are tightly coupled. It is therefore difficult for users to freely choose their favorite appliances and services. In this paper, we propose a new HNS architecture that accommodates multi-vendor services by extensively using cloud technologies. The new architecture manages individual HNS operations and data as standard services within the cloud. The vendor services must go through the cloud to access the HNS. Thus, loose coupling among the HNS and services can be achieved. As a result, the proposed architecture realizes more flexible HNS beneficial for both users and vendors.