Home & Office

Introduction

Connecting devices for home, SOHO and SME Environments

Safer, better connected and manageable home / SME environments

The Internet has been a major driver for the evolution to broadband, creating a new experience for the end-user. While broadband was once simply about the delivery of high-speed internet access and services to a PC, it is now being driven beyond the PC, to other devices and services in the "home" as well as in the "enterprise" segment.

The variety of devices that need to be interconnected is growing rapidly and most require broadband. In addition, they need to be able to provide those services that the end -customer requires without ignoring Quality of Service (QoS).

In the vision of a Connected Home, everything is connected: Smart homes use information appliances (e.g. consumer devices which offer Internet and/or network access without using the traditional operating system interface) and a home-based network to connect household appliances and smart objects/metering in general (such as temperature, gas, humidity sensors and smoke detectors) to each other and externally. The same applies to the enterprise sector, where the availability of a broadband connection is of paramount important to achieve the business advantage associated with the underlying innovative services that a Connected Office may bring.

These considerations are the focus of ETSI's Home & Office cluster: wireless broadband connectivity and access, power line communication, machine to machine  communications, fixed line access and home gateways.

Three sub-areas can be identified within the cluster:

  • Home & Office Wireless; wireless access in home and office environments such as DECT and other short range communications.
  • Home & Office Interconnection; from a highlevel architecture for Machine-to-Machine communications (M2M) and NGN Home Networking to legacy and new access technologies as well as power line communications.
  • Home & Office Requirements; high level end-user requirements including Quality of Service and security aspects. 

Groups

The Home & Office cluster encompasses the activities of several ETSI Technical Committees:

  • ATTM (Access, Terminals, Transmission and Multiplexing)
  • BRAN (Broadband Radio Access Network)
  • DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications)
  • ERM (EMC and Radio spectrum Matters) [Task Groups: TG11 and TG28]
  • M2M (Machine-to-Machine)
  • PLT (Power Line Telecommunications)
  • STQ (Speech and multimedia Transmission Quality)
  • TISPAN (Telecommunications and Internet converged Services and Protocols for Advanced Networking) [Working Groups: WG5 and WG7]
  • USER Group

Other contributors include 3GPP, the Third Generation Partnership Project.

Activities

ETSI's DECT Technical Committee is responsible for standardization activities of New Generation DECT, which extends basic DECT functionalities with many added features such as high quality audio, broadband data and audio streaming. Equipment with DECT New Generation features is already on the market.

Home Control is another domain where a wireless technology like DECT could be used and, in this regard, activities on a new DECT-based technology called ULE (Ultra Low Energy) are in full swing. ULE is a technology intended for sensors, alarms, M2M and industrial automation.

Smart metering standardization is being handled by Task Group 28 of ETSI's Technical Committee ERM, in response to the European Commission Mandate M/441. The work concerns smart metering wireless access protocol physical and data link layers.

With regards to spectrum utilization, Task Group 11 of ERM maintains the Harmonized Standards for the frequency band 2,4 GHz (mostly used by access technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) and the 5GHz frequency band.

TC ATTM undertakes investigations on possible wireless interference to existing cable network services by future wireless devices operating below 1 GHz and in particular the 790-862 MHz band designated for Digital Dividend. Similar studies are addressing the proposed new LTE mobile services that operate in the same UHF band.

ETSI's M2M Technical Committee is producing use cases of M2M applications for the ‘Connected Consumer' which involve consumer electronic devices that utilise network communications capabilities via wired and/or wireless network and that can be directly or indirectly controlled by the human user. These use cases will identify requirements, functionality and capabilities for improving the network for M2M services.

In the area of power line communications, TC PLT specifies power line in-home networks for Smart Electricity Meters, wide band low rate command & control PLT for in-home networks and requirements for power line communication for smart meters. Specifications have been produced for the deployment of general multimedia and voice Packet Cable Services including Interactive Cable Television Services over DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification).

ETSI is carrying out Quality of Service studies in a variety of areas that have an impact on the Home & Office environment, including Fax-over-IP (FoIP) and Modem-over-IP (MoIP), ‘superwideband' and fullband terminals, for headset, hands-free and conferencing.

Studies in the use of NGN for Energy control and monitoring are being carried out, taking account of similar work in other organizations.

Security mechanisms for customer premises networks (CPNs) connected to NGN core networks are being developed.

The activities of 3GPP include network optimization for Machine-to-Machine communications and machine type applications (maintenance of heating and air condition, alarm systems, etc.), as well as the "femtocell" concept (3G Home Node B and Home enhanced Node B).