General Middleware Bridge to Support Device Interoperability on Different Middlewares

In this paper, we investigate an integrated architecture to support interoperability among heterogeneous middle wares on home networks. We propose and implement a general middleware bridge to support device interoperability on different middle wares for efficient home networks. The IWFEngine(inter working function engine) architecture provides an interface for identifying and utilizing services among devices using simple rules in other to support interoperability among heterogeneous middle wares. Through the registered rules, a local middleware message and a standard message are changed into each other. Unlike existing integrated middleware architectures, the IWFEngine architecture improves efficiency, and convenient adaptor development is possible through simple rules and by using local middleware messages. By this configuration, a conversion rule for exchanging messages between devices on various middle wares is described which does not require modification of the corresponding middleware, and operations can be performed in accordance with the existing corresponding middleware mechanism. Finally, the overhead incurred by a centralized and integrated middleware architecture can be reduced by distributing adaptors into multiple devices.