UPnP Compression for IP based Field Devices in Building Automation

IP based field bus networks enable the usage of common IP protocols for example for security or automatic configuration, on the field level. A drawback of this protocol deployment is the higher required network bandwidth due to enormous high level protocol overhead, especially on XML-based schemes. We investigate UPnP datagram size reduction on an experimental IP based field bus with Ethernet and wireless IEEE802.15.4 devices, for building automation and control applications. UPnP is used for configuration and operation. In order to reduce data rates, we suggest a transparent bidirectional XML/SOAP proxy for example on the Ethernet/IEE802.15.4 hub and on the wireless devices itself. The proxy uses cache-based tokenizing of the SOAP messages and feedback, eventually deflating subsequent similar messages by orders of magnitude.