A Semi-Markov Model of a Home Network Access Protocol

Nowadays we observe a still growing interest in having greater control of domestic appliances and of interconnecting several kinds of electronic devices in the home (and similar environments) so as to obtain additional features (IEEE Special Issue 1991). Typical applications are energy management, safety, security, home automation and entertainment. Thus the conventional trend of viewing consumer products in isolation is shifting towards a more system-oriented approach—The Home System. Several home systems are currently candidate for world-wide standardization: the Home Bus System (Japan), Consumer Electronic Bus (USA), SmartHouse (USA), and Esprit Home Systems (Europe). The latter system (EHSA 1991) emerged from the cooperation of several European manufacturers and its architecture is based on the well-known OSI model (OSI 1984). The Home System has adopted four OSI layers: the Physical layer, the Data Link layer, the Network layer and the Application layer (Vlot and Katoen 1991). The Data Link layer has been subdivided into the Logical Link Control (LLC) sublayer