HomeGrid论坛成员希望制定统一的互联方案,以此来替代诸如同轴电缆多媒体联盟(Multimedia over Coax Alliance)、家庭电话线联网联盟(HomePNA Alliance)和家庭电力线联盟(HomePlug Powerline Alliance)的所作的工作。
消费电子产品及计算机制造商一直在探讨数字家庭的发展前景。但是由于这些设备制造商之间缺乏统一的互联标准,从而阻碍了数字家庭的发展。目前,业界已经开发了使用Wi-Fi把各种家庭设备连接在一起的通用无线标准,Wi-Fi联盟也在致力于推广其802.11n标准。不过,有线网络具有很大的优势,稳定性和性能都优于无线网络,并且目前大多数家庭都拥有必须的基础设施构件。
这个新成立的HomeGrid论坛总裁、英特尔的Matt Theall表示:“目前的标准的确是太多,而大多数厂商希望得到一个统一的标准。”这四家HomeGrid论坛主要成员公司称,它们将与国际电信联盟合作,促进、测试和致力于发展国际电信联盟正在开发的ITU-T 标准。据悉,目前HomeGrid论坛的三大工作目标,便是强化ITU-T 标准的技术?热荨⒕咛迓涫?ITU-T 标准的商用化、并且支持ITU-T 标准的产品互通性更加完善。
“ITU非常强大,这对制定一个统一的标准十分有利。”ITU 标准组的主席,同时也是英飞凌高级标准经理Les Brown表示。
支持者也看到ITU制定的标准通常都是非常具有争议的,比如说DSL标准。“这非常具有挑战性,不过只有ITU才配做这样的事情。”标准组高级系统工程师,来自Intel的Barry O'Mahony表示。
Theall表示,目前已经有35家公司参与标准工作,包括支持电力线的DS2、Intellon和Panasonic,还有设计HPNA芯片的CopperGate公司。
HomeGrid论坛创始成员共有11家公司,另外7家成员公司分别是Aware、DS2、Pulse Link、Ikanos、Sigma Designs、Westell、Gigle半导体公司。
英特尔、英飞凌、德州仪器和松下将组建该论坛的董事会,它们表示正在芯片制造商、服务提供商以及消费电子产品及个人电脑制造商中发展新成员。
翻页查看英文原文:
Group drives Gbit home network effort
HomeGrid hopes to accelerate ITU's work
Eleven companies officially launch a new consortium today (April 29) to accelerate work on a way to unify the fragmented world of home networking. The HomeGrid Forum hopes to speed up work on a standard to define chips that can carry data at rates up to a gigabit per second across coax, phone or power lines.
HomeGrid aims to help the International Telecommunication Union's committee deliver a specification for physical layer and media access control chips within a year. They believe the spec could replace separate efforts by groups such as the Multimedia over Coax Alliance, the HomePNA Alliance and the HomePlug Powerline Alliance.
"We are all aware there is a fragmented wired [home networking] market today, and a number of companies would like to get to a common technology," said Matthew Theall, president of HomeGrid and a technology strategist at Intel. "This technology could be embedded in hundreds of millions of products some day," he added.
HomeGrid will host weekly technical work sessions to speed up progress on the ITU effort which conducts face-to-face meetings just once a quarter. In addition, it aims to take on marketing and certification roles to make sure the resulting standard is adopted.
"We believe today's announcement is an important step towards eliminating fragmentation in the industry and achieving the vision of a networked home," said Kurt Scherf, analyst with market watcher Parks Associates, speaking in a prepared statement.
"This is ambitious, but I think its necessary otherwise consumers might face the prospect of home networking products that not only don't interoperate but actually interfere with each other," said Les Brown, chairman of the ITU group and a senior standards manager for Infineon.
"The ITU is a very powerful group for unifying the industry so we think we have a chance for success," Brown added.
Backers note the ITU helped settle contentious debates on standards such as DSL. "It is challenging, but if any one can do it, it's the ITU," said Barry O'Mahony, a senior staff systems engineer at Intel, working with the group that got its start in 2006.
It's not clear whether HomeGrid or has backing from the wide group of chip, system and service companies who drive home networking standards.
About 35 companies now participate in , said Theall of Intel. They include several powerline network players such as DS2, Intellon and Panasonic as well as CopperGate which designs chips for the HPNA standard.
HomeGrid is just starting to court members broadly. "We expect many of the members will also join this effort," said Theall.
After the HomeGrid launch we will reach out to more people to create the momentum and critical mass we need," said Imran Hajiumusa, vice president of broadband access at Infineon Technologies North America.
HomeGrid was founded by Infineon, Intel, Panasonic and Texas Instruments. Initial members include Aware Inc., DS2, Gigle Semiconductor, Ikanos, Pulse Link, Sigma Designs and Westell.
Inside the effort
The ITU takes a piece-by-piece approach to writing standards. The committee has nailed down many technical decisions, especially for its physical layer chip. But many issues are still outstanding, particularly in the MAC.
One of the more important decisions to date has been to target a maximum data rate of a Gbit/s as part of a proposal from the companies who founded HomeGrid. The committee also accepted a target of supporting 400 Mbits/s on at least 99 percent of coax lines and 250 Mbits/s on 95 percent of powerline connections.
"We did not want [] to be a duplication of existing technologies, rather we wanted to position it as a next-generation with performance beyond MoCA, HomePlug and the others," said O'Mahony of Intel.
The group has decided to use a discrete Fourier transform version of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing as its modulation scheme. In addition, it will embrace both parameterized and prioritized quality-of-service approaches.
"There's a bunch of heavy lifting still ahead," said O'Mahony.
For example the group has yet to define the number of bands it will support and which frequencies it will use on different mediums.
"We've done a fair amount of work on the PHY layer, but we have much more to do on the MAC," said Brown. "We are talking about a two-phased approach where we focus on the PHY this year and the MAC next year," he added.
Among controller issues, "really there's been no work on security yet and that's a huge hole left to fill," said O'Mahony.
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