General Middleware Bridge to Support Device Interoperability on Different Middlewares

In this paper, we investigate an integrated architecture to support interoperability among heterogeneous middlewares on home networks. We propose and implement a general middleware bridge to support device interoperability on different middlewares for efficient home networks. The IWFEngine (interworking function engine) architecture provides an interface for identifying and utilizing services among devices using simple rules in other to support interoperability among heterogeneous middlewares. Through the registered rules, local middleware messages are translated into standard messages, and vice versa. Unlike existing integrated middleware architectures, the IWFEngine architecture improves the efficiency, and a 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 middlewares is described which does not require the 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.