An Inter-MAC architecture for heterogeneous gigabit home networks

The home network of the near future will be a heterogeneous broadband network supporting the use of wired as well as wireless transmission technologies. The variety of services will range from HDTV via gaming to emergency services in the telemedicine area. In this paper, we introduce a technology-independent protocol layer called Inter-MAC which provides a common infrastructure to all home networking devices. The Inter-MAC can establish a connection via different transmission technologies while ensuring appropriate QoS. Key to this is the capability to correctly interpret technology-dependent PHY and MAC parameters for determining QoS when selecting initial and alternative paths, as well as the feature of admission control. Our simulations indicate clearly that the Inter-MAC approach can cope with varying loads, for instance, the time the jitter needed to stabilize was as short as 4 s. The reduced QoS was not noticeable by the user since the jitter introduced by handling additional HDTV flows was less than 0.2 ms for the existing and less than 0.7 ms for the new flow.