A Proxy-Based Solution for Interoperability of Smart Home Protocols

During the recent years, we can observe how mobile devices entered in the lives of people, becoming their main personal assistants and helping in various daily tasks. However not just mobile devices have evolved. And others electronic devices we use every day also experienced changes that have become smarter as the example of home devices. All these devices interconnected in the same environment or the same network, making use of services and exchange information with other devices, characterize a smart environment. Smart homes are special class of such environments and, increasingly, has become a scene with a variety of heterogeneous devices. However, due to the rapid progress of technology and the rise of a large number of heterogeneous devices, a variety of independent communication protocols were created, establishing a complex scenario to ensure interoperability between them. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to analyze the state of the art with an emphasis on the interoperability of current Mobile Devices with other digital devices present in a Smart home. Thus, it will be defined which protocols are currently most commonly used for this purpose, what are the current ongoing projects, what are the limitations of the solutions found in the research and, finally, it will be proposed an alternative solution for interoperability between the devices at a Smart home.