Implicit functionality: dynamic services composition for home networked appliances

The proliferation of networked appliances and the increased complexity associated with their configuration requires considerable effort from specialists and home users alike. Many of the common applications they offer and the sophisticated functions they support could be better utilised to increase performance and ensure simplicity. For example a TV, DVD player and radio have all got output speakers and they are capable of producing sound, but there is no common framework to harness these functionalities. In this paper we propose a framework that enables implicit functionalities in a home appliances network. In this network, home appliances are structured around a central service integration controller (SIC), which integrates the sen ices they offer and coordinates the communications between all service-enabled appliances, independent of the protocol type being used. Implicit functionalities can be formed based on the SIC's ability to discover and dynamically compose services to form specific configurations, which are only limited by the user's imagination. The prototype we implemented uses a home entertainment theatre system as a case study and shows that this framework not only fulfils the requirements of the paper but also gives rise to a number of issues such as the service-enabled appliance architecture and macro-scale services composition and its security.