Consolidation of EPC and Heterogeneous Home Network

Tamkang Journal of Science and Engineering, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 21 28 (2010) 21 Consolidation of EPC and Heterogeneous Home Network Yao-Chung Chang Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taitung University, Taitung, Taiwan 950, R.O.C. Abstract According to the International Organization EPCglobal Inc. which leads EPC (Electronic Product Code) network framework standard, EPC combines Internet and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology with a rapid development in recent years. At the same time, with a variety of communications and network technology, the diversity and heterogeneity of the intercommunication technologies flourish in the digital home environment. However, variety of network architectures and protocols are different in digital home space; there are several important research issues in heterogeneous home network. In order to enhance the quality of service for heterogeneous home network, this paper constructs the EPC network architecture and performs QoS management through the EPC Framework. Also, this paper explores QoS and security issues in EPC network and heterogeneous home network environment. This paper accelerates the integration of heterogeneous networks in digital home environment. Finally, the proposed EPC network architecture in the heterogeneous home network will reach effective network management and assure network service quality. Key Words: EPC Network, Quality of Service, Heterogeneous Digital Home Network 1. Introduction *Corresponding author. E-mail: ycc@nttu.edu.tw EPC code is the most important design for the EPC system [1]. Each EPC code is a unique code in the information system, so the relevant information of objects can be accessed in the global EPC network and built up information exchange standards [2]. In current applications, the EPC codes have the greatest opportunity to be the next generation coding system. The coding structure extends the existing traditional Barcode. The Barcode and the EPC have the advantages and disadvantages: Barcode is lower-cost, but EPC is more expensive; Barcode needs to be operated by human, hence it is easy to make mistakes by people; EPC is an automatic identification technology without requiring human operation [3]. Hence, EPC code marks targets not only traditional barcode items, but also a single small object, boxes, large containers, trucks and even expanding the goods and services. Figure 1 shows the global EPC network framework which is combined by a series of Local EPC network [4]. The composition unit in EPCglobal network includes EPC code, RFID Tag and Reader, Middleware, EPC IS, EPC ONS. We can contrast the composition unit in EPCglobal network with Internet. The EPC IS is like websites on the Internet, and the EPC ONS is similar to DNS. EPC end users use various Enterprise Applications that joined inside enterprises EPCglobal network to look up EPC information. EPC network technology is an important component of the EPC system. EPC information network system is based on the Internet through Savant management software system. The Object Name Service System (ONS) and Physical Markup Language (PML) achieve the global

22 Yao-Chung Chang name, EPC code will be sent to the designated ONS name server in order to obtain the required information. ONS framework returns the corresponding IP addresses to PML servers. The local ONS sends back IP address to the local server. Figure 1. Global EPC network framework. physical interconnection network. It is necessary to have a special network structure for EPC tag mechanism in an open and global traceability items. Because the tag only stores the EPC code, EPC system also requires some mechanisms for mapping the EPC code with corresponding information. The Object Name Service (ONS) provides the rules for mapping EPC code to EPC information. It is an automated online system which is similar to DNS system. The primary purpose of DNS is to locate a computer on the Internet for a specific location. The ONS simply uses the same technologies of DNS. The operations of ONS are showed in Figure 2: Reader gets information from the tag as a string with EPC code specification. Reader transmits the EPC code to a local server for processing. A local server sorts and filters out unnecessary information of EPC code, then the EPC code will be sent to a local ONS on the next step. Local ONS converses the EPC code into EPC domain According to the IP address of the local server, the correct PML server obtains the necessary information related to EPC code. Accelerate the integration speed of heterogeneous communication network technology in digital home is the main objective of this paper. In this research, we use the EPC network architecture to reach effective management and guarantee the service of quality in heterogeneous digital home network. Also, the security architecture for EPC network is proposed in this paper. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides a survey of communication technologies and QoS issues in heterogeneous digital home environments. The system architecture including EPC Network Gateway, Security EPC Network Architecture and QoS in Heterogeneous Digital Home Network Architecture are proposed in section 3. Experimental results and discussions are presented in section 4. Finally, section 5 concludes this paper. 2. Digital Home Network Environments 2.1 Heterogeneous Network In recent years, with the flourishing development of different communication and network technology, the relevant devices of the network used in homes and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) grow every day. The concept of Information Appliance rises [5], the electrical household equipments will appear in homes and small and medium-sized enterprises. Besides, va- Figure 2. Operations of ONS framework.

Consolidation of EPC and Heterogeneous Home Network 23 rietal and heterogeneous communication technologies will coexist in the digital home environment, as shown in Figure 3. It includes the HAVi (Home Audio Video Interoperability), IrDA (Infrared Data Association), IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.11, Jini [6], UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) [7], USB (Universal Serial Bus) [8], Bluetooth [9], IEEE 1394 [10], PowerLine over Ethernet, Sensor Network, RFID Network, Home Plug and HomePNA, etc. Under the environment of complicated and heterogeneous digital home network, the management of homes and small and medium-sized enterprises will be a serious challenge for users, electrical home appliances designers and service providers. At the same time, how to manage network and diagnose the mistake effectively under the environment of complicated digital home network is a major challenge for users, electrical home appliances designers and service providers. At present, under the standard of network management, the most popular protocol is SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) in the local area network for IP-based [11 15] environment. But the SNMP standard is not unified in other heterogeneous home networks. The shortcomings are listed as followings: 1. SNMP polling may cause the emergence of the congested situation of network communication in a large network or step out the wide area network (WAN). The burden of collection information in SNMP put on the management client. 2. SNMP Agent is unable to offer the records of a certain devices and information. 3. SNMP protocol cannot keep all management information such as the identification, state of the device and dispose with the unified form. The combining interfaces will be emerged in the future digital home environment to manage varietal and heterogeneous communication technology. Users are interested only in the service that they can use; they will not care how the communication protocols are operated. In order to realize various kinds of devices of communication in digital home environment, each device must be able to automatically find other devices inside the same family and make communication with it, offer an integration service that can cross different technologies and protocols. 2.2 Quality of Service In order to meet the different needs of QoS mechanisms, QoS protocol and algorithm are listed as follows: 1. Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP): It offers the letter order that resources reserve of network. 2. Differentiated Services (DiffServ): It offers a simple classification and network aggregate flow to get the priority. 3. Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS): It controls bandwidth management of network through the network path and aggregates data flow according to the marked network traffic dividing into groups. 4. Subnet Bandwidth Management (SBM): It classifies and ranks the priority to the OSI Layer 2 (Data Link Layer) to exchange and share with IEEE 802 Series network. The DiffServ (Differentiated Services-differentiation/ classification of services) is the IETF standard that provides QoS. WAN network is mainly used in business, and the principle is that application services or data flow can be classified and marked with the rules, and provided different transmission level. We will integrate the Diff- Serv Framework for EPC network in this research in order to achieve effective quality assurance services of heterogeneous network. 3. System Architecture This research accelerates the integration of the net- Figure 3. Management framework of heterogeneous remote home network.

24 Yao-Chung Chang work technology for the heterogeneous communication in the digital home through EPC network framework. This section presents related topics of EPC Gateway, Security EPC Network Architecture and QoS in heterogeneous digital home network. 3.1 EPC Network Gateway During this stage, we construct standard services of different EPC specifications when implementing the digital home gateway system [16]. 3.2 Security EPC Network Architecture About the security issues, this research uses Linux FreeRADIUS to construct the EPC network for the Secure Product Authority Server (PAS) network framework, provides EPC user to complete EPC Code authentication, identity authentication, transaction authorization function, and etc [17]. In order to strengthen the security of the wireless network, this research constructs the PPTPD VPN Sever of Linux to provide the WLAN encrypt mechanism. User can access EPC network to query the Tag information from this framework. This study constructs the PAS to EPC network environment, establishes Smart Phone which has RFID Reader function, and designs Mobile the RFID network framework. Furthermore, this research expands the EPC network to Mobile RFID/EPC network, establishes mobile RFID technology toward the Omni-directional of security network framework. Figure 5 shows the network architecture of this study which contains EPC-IS Server, EPC- PAS Server, EPC User of the EPC network framework (left side of Figure 5); Mobile EPC-IS, EPC PAS Server and Mobile RFID User of Mobile RFID network framework (right of Figure 5). 3.3 QoS in Heterogeneous Digital Home Network Figures 6 and 7 show two modes of QoS: DiffServ Framework and DiffServ Region-wide Framework. Relative topics for QoS in heterogeneous digital home network are listed as follows: Internetworking: The existing network must link each other. Heterogeneity: It must consider various networks that contain broadcast, satellite, wireless network, broadcast network and other networks. Distributed Management: It allows the distributed management of the resource distribution. Figure 5. EPC/mobile RFID network frameworks [17]. Figure 4. EPC network architecture [16].

Consolidation of EPC and Heterogeneous Home Network l l Easy Attachment: It allows the host to connect in a lower power mode. Accountability: It must be effective when resources are distributed. Figures 8 and 9 shows the framework of heterogeneous digital home network integrated with EPC Framework and the status diagram of QoS EPC network. 25 4. Experimental Results 4.1 Simulation Environment Figure 10 shows the NS2 simulation of EPC Network and the QoS analysis in digital home network. In the simulation environment, home network links different IP-Based devices such as the refrigerator, the microwave, the videophone and the web phone. User can connect the Internet through these IP-Based devices. Suppose the bandwidth resources that in home network are 2 Mbps and the bandwidth requirements of video conference and web phone are 500 kbps and 350 kbps. In order to analyze the differences between QoS supported and Non-QoS supported scenarios, Table 1 shows the QoS classifications according to the characteristics of the ne- Figure 6. DiffServ framework. Figure 9. Status diagram of QoS EPC network. Figure 7. DiffServ region-wide framework. Figure 8. Integration of EPC network framework with heterogeneous digital home network. Figure 10. Simulation environment of QoS analysis in digital home network.

26 Yao-Chung Chang cessary service, Table 2 shows the start and stop time of application programs in the simulation environment. We gradually increase the bandwidth requirement of the video conference and web phone. 4.2 Simulation Results and Analysis Figures 11 and 12 show the case of Non-QoS supported web phone and video conference. When Non-QoS supported web phone, video conference and interactive program of refrigerator join the resource competition simultaneously, it causes insufficient resources. The delay time rises from 0.05 milliseconds to 0.25 milliseconds (Figures 11 and 12) and throughput drops to 320 325 kbps and 470 475 kbps (Figures 15 and 16). By contrast, delay time is maintained at about 0.05 milliseconds with QoS support (shown in Figures 13 and 14). The throughput also maintains at 350 kbps and 500 kbps, as shown in Figures 17 and 18. The experimental results show the different delay time between Non-QoS Support and QoS Support. The results can make sure that the proposed QoS supported method has better performance for heterogeneous digital home network environment. 5. Conclusion Key issues of heterogeneous network are minimiz- Table 1. QoS classification of application Device Application Required QoS Class Web phone VoIP Conversation Video Conference Video Conference Conversation Refrigerator Web browsing Interactive Microwave Data downloading Background Table 2. Simulation time Device Start Time Stop Time Web phone 1.0 9.0 Video Conference 2.0 9.0 Refrigerator 3.0 6.0 Microwave 4.0 7.0 Figure 11. Delay time of 350 kbps non-qos supported web phone. Figure 12. Delay time 500 kbps non-qos supported video conference. Figure 13. Delay time of 350 kbps QoS supported web phone. Figure 14. Delay time 500 kbps QoS supported video conference.

Consolidation of EPC and Heterogeneous Home Network 27 Figure 15. Throughput of 350 kbps non-qos supported web phone. Figure 16. Throughput of 500 kbps non-qos supported video conference. Figure 17. Throughput of 350 kbps QoS supported web phone. Figure 18. Throughput of 500 kbps QoS supported video conference. ing network delay and increasing network performance. QoS mechanism can efficiently partition bandwidth based on different parameters, and provide lower network delay and higher throughput. Hence, this paper proposes the differentiated services mechanism with QoS control for EPC network framework in heterogeneous digital home network. Also, this study constructs the EPC Network through RFID/EPC framework to reach effective and secure network management, guarantees the service of quality in heterogeneous digital home network environments. According to the simulation results, the proposed QoS mechanism provides better performance and higher levels of administrative control over congested EPC network and heterogeneous digital home network. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the National Science Council of the Republic of China, Taiwan for financially supporting this research under Contract No. 98-2221-E- 143-002-MY2. References [1] Auto-ID Labs [document on the Internet]. Auto-ID Labs online; 2003 [cited 2010 February 25]. Available from: http://www.autoidlabs.org. [2] Ng, M. L. and Leong, K. S., A Simple EPC Network Architecture, In: Auto-ID Labs. 2004 Auto-ID Labs Research Workshop Research Workshop; 2004 September 23-24; Zurich, Switzerland (2004). [3] Kim, Y.-I., Park, J.-S. and Cheong, T.-S., Study of RFID Middleware Framework for Ubiquitous Computing Environment, In: Choi, M.-K. editor. Proceeding of 2005 International Conference Advanced Communication Technology; 2005 February 21-23; Phoenix Park, Korea; pp. 825 830 (2005). [4] EPC Global Standards Overview [document on the Internet]. EPC Global online; 2009 [cited 2010 Fe-

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