An Open Diagnostic Infrastructure for Future Home Networks

Homes of the future will become increasingly networked with all kinds of devices and appliances connected together. Faults in such systems are frustrating for consumers and can be tricky to track down. This paper describes a prototype Fault Diagnosis System (FDS) that utilizes agents distributed across a home network, operating autonomously in the background and cooperatively exchanging information in order to identify the root causes of problems. The focus is on the use of an open architecture which employs OSGi Service Platforms to allow the dynamic extension of diagnostic capabilities to address new types of problem that may emerge with new types of device or application. The paper reviews the general benefits of an agent based approach and highlights the distinctive features of the FDS prototype which contribute to its open structure.