Service interfaces for field-level home and building automation

Gateway functionality is a key point in leveraging the potential of a home or building automation network. High-level interfaces providing abstractions of field area network (FAN) functionality significantly reduce the effort involved in creating application-level solutions. Such interfaces are presented on two different levels of abstraction. First, an interface corresponding to the network layer of a FAN used in building automation (European installation bus, EIB) is shown, which unifies handling of the various physical media and bus access hardware available. Second, an approach with the goal of providing a generic representation of narrow-band building control functionality independent of a specific FAN technology is proposed. The interfaces are designed to be used by lightweight components of an OSGi (open services gateway initiative) platform, which is introduced as well.