Emerging digital home networks more bandwidth, as well as voice, video and data transmission, storage and management for original equipment manufacturers to make a series of new challenges, this article from security, system architecture and standards provide solutions and make the media servers and media adapter designs.

Development of digital home networking can be divided into three phases. First phase of the home network generally is relatively simple, in most cases only a PC with a broadband modem is connected to wide area network (WAN), families with little or no local area network (LAN) connection. Whether it is based on ADSL, cable, or fiber, these new broadband service "always on" property and increasing the available broadband services allows multiple users to share at home possible. When the user leaves their host upgrade, usually PC machines will not be thrown away, but for use by the other members of the family, which soon promoted the development of Panasonic DMW-BCF10PP Battery Charger phase II-multiple users home network appear. On the broadband modem LAN side adds an Ethernet router, can help multiple users with broadband WAN connections in the home advantage.

In the second phase, the commercialization of broadband routers, gateways and IP sharing equipment gradually allowing users only have to increase the minimal cost to implement a basic home network. In addition, the cost of Wi-Fi technology provides wireless connectivity for quick drop of more than one PC at home feasible options and addresses the physical wiring in the trouble and cost in the room.

Other than the two drivers, digital home network coincided with the second phase of the development of consumer devices demand high, such as digital cameras, digital cameras, digital music player. Emergence of such a device to expand the home personal computer for storage, editing, and digital media playback devices. As digital media content on your home network continues to grow, digital home networks has entered the third stage of development, consumers need more peer sharing power. At the same time, also need to transfer the content to devices other than traditional PC networks, such as TV and stereo set and other traditional play equipment.

Media adapter and media servers

In the third phase of the development of digital home networking, in addition to the PC in digital home networks and residential gateways/routers outside again media adapter and such new media server device. Both of these important commitments of networking equipment can only be done by PC media processing tasks will be streaming out of the many media processing tasks from the PC, to form a Center-free network structures. Figure 1 illustrates a network topology where the data from a network share, you can use PC management and intervention, also without PC management and intervention.

Media adapter is responsible for preparing streaming multimedia content in a digital home network, playing in the home entertainment equipment. These devices must be capable of receiving, decoding and playback, including compressed video and still images, audio files of the media stream. On the function, and traditional media adapter PC machine very similar to the video and audio subsystem, you need to decode capability that is similar to transform the input data stream. This type of equipment required for critical systems include connected digital home network wired or wireless LAN connections, as well as support for media formats (MP3, JPEG, MPEG, etc) decoding hardware and software. In addition, more complex media adapter can support digital rights management (DRM), and you can play a wider range of media types.

Media Server is a network of shared storage devices, is the center of streaming multimedia content in digital home networks. Without PC intervention, management, or service, the media server to complete the file-sharing and direct data storage. Digital home network media server needs to provide the ability to capture, encode and transmit multimedia content, its performance and system requirements typically are much higher than the media adapter. In addition to LAN and/or outside WAN network connectivity and Nikon EN-EL10 Battery Charger management capabilities, Media Server system requirements include: support for multimedia coding capabilities, can capture and encode analog data stream in real time to create digital media streaming; supporting the standardization of hard drive IDE controller interfaces to connect hard drives to store media streaming; direct support for media creation, and peripheral devices, such as a digital camera. Currently popular peripheral protocols for USB and IEEE1394 (FireWire).

Media adapter and powerful media server on behalf of the first batch of new home networking devices, support outside of the traditional PC subsystems storing and sharing media content, which makes it easy to access and use within the family.

Emerging application architecture and system requirements

As an emerging application areas, multimedia appliances face two major challenges required in designing system architecture phase to seriously consider and address these challenges. First of all, in terms of network connectivity, and multimedia formats and peripheral interface, there are a large number of standards. Therefore, you must choose from standard combinations to meet consumer demand. In addition, network and connectivity standards continue to evolve, new agreements are emerging, multimedia appliances device design engineer must ensure that the system can keep pace with these changes. Successful design must be flexible to support the current interface technology, but must also be able to easily support new standards or standards change and addition of new features, but do not have to bear additional costs arising from the comprehensive system design, and the resulting risks that may result in missed market window.

For resolved these design challenge, first should makes system design has may extended sexual, while has enough high of processing performance, to meet function changes and standard evolution by needs of additional hardware and software support; second, should design a flexible of module of system, to in support now and the future of main interface and peripherals Shi does not needs large of again design, and related of cost expenditure and pay time cost.

In emerging markets, product launch time is of the essence. If the first generation of devices to catch up with the market window, increases the chance of being widely accepted by the market, allowing producers keep pace with the emerging market needs, and can participate in to make crucial decisions on market orientation and development process. Multimedia designers and manufacturers of household electrical appliances can leverage existing PC peripheral hardware and system software to achieve functional design, so as to shorten product time to market.

Key system decisions

Use off-the-shelf PC peripherals to build modular system easily adapts to changes in market demand in the process design engineers select standard interconnection agreements between PCI system can reap many benefits, because with this widely used bus, design engineers can choose from a large number of ready-made components network connectivity and multimedia support more capable components.

In order to obtain good system performance, design engineers can use the integrated communications processors, these processors have a high bandwidth PCI interface, can support multiple external during the primary, along with high-performance CPU cores and memory subsystems, as well as the needs for network connection with Ethernet interface.

With such a can meets the needs of this emerging application CPU, second issue of concern in the design software. Due to the combination of emerging applications such as network protocol and media support with the needs of very different applications in the past, special software for commercial software package also does not meet these requirements. Linux widely used in the field of network and PC design, it is an ideal choice to meet market demand. General wireless chipset and Ethernet device drivers available to open source, and Linux in the PC market is widely recognized, this means modular hardware design of PC peripherals and chipsets used in the Linux driver may be obtained from vendors or open source.

Although there are open for networking and PC peripherals drivers, but the best choice is still used by optimized for dedicated processor for device drivers, kernel and toolchain without royalties vertical software solutions that make up the level of integration. Software development team can focus on applications to add value, rather than from the public areas of the collaborative nature of a large number of drivers. At the same time, integrated communications processor vendors are increasingly began to provide the necessary basis for free integration code, so as to further shorten product time to market, and avoid costly licensing fees and royalties.

Security issues

In support of multimedia home network there are two important security issues. The first is to protect data on your home network from potential threats from external influence. With the proliferation of networked devices, Peer-To-Peer sharing data protection becomes more and more important, through software dedicated hardware acceleration, integration, and auxiliary system control processor can address this security issue. For many media types with a lower data rate, achieved through software can provide a lot of information appliance equipment with sufficient capacity, but for the gateway itself, hardware acceleration may be more appropriate. Network data encryption is another issue, systems design engineer can chip that employs a range of programmes to address this issue, including for software to perform the required performance of high frequency CPU with integrated or with hardware acceleration products.

With the emergence of multimedia home networking device, also produces a new class of security issues. DRM is based on the keys to ensuring network device is authorized to receive the data stream. Adapter to the media, DRM algorithm allows service providers to ensure that users can only receive the program he had purchased the data, and DRM algorithm can also be used to control the data flow. Same algorithm to the media server you Panasonic DMC-TZ1 Battery Charger can prevent unauthorized data is written to the disk array or burned on a disc. Such problems can be achieved through a variety of software or/and hardware to solve. As digital home network supporting more and more rich, multimedia content, which is increasingly becoming a systems design engineer and critical issues that must be addressed and resolved by the service provider.

Media servers and media adapter solution

IDT Corporation RC32434 Interprise processors designed for multimedia home appliances offer a program to meet the performance and flexibility. Integrates a RC32434 processor operating frequency up to 400MHz of 32-bit MIPS CPU core, as well as integrated DDR memory controller and can support up to 6 external Master PCI v2.2 interface. In addition, fast, support this processor also integrates a media independent interface (MII) and simplified MII (Reduced MII) standard Ethernet interface, simplifying network connectivity.

This MIPS architecture fully supported by the operating system and other development tools, IDT also provides an optimized Linux operating system with device drivers and applications, these drivers and applications enabled for many of the features of home networking products, including MPEG4, USB (1.1 and 2), ATA and serial ATA (SATA). RC32434 the structure of the block diagram shown in Figure 2.

Flexible combination of PCI and MII/RMII interconnect allows design engineers to build a flexible system, without the need for costly and time-consuming based design schema upgrade conditions, may be implemented according to market needs or omit certain peripheral interface. Integrates high-performance DDR controllers and the CPU running at speeds of JVC BN-VF823 Battery Charger up to 400MHz enables design engineers to design a highly scalable system that can adapt to emerging standards for network and media, can also meet the requirements of improving system performance, or functionality. Provides a detailed design of the following examples.

As shown in Figure 3, the media adapter instances using RC32434 integrated communications processors on-chip Ethernet MAC to connect to the digital home of wired networks, while taking advantage of the high-performance PCI interfacing WLAN devices and media decoder chipsets. High-performance CPU kernel provides the processing power required, it can run the required network protocol (such as TCP/IP, RTSP, and RTP/RTCP, and UPnP) on the side of LAN and WAN network communication, but also for the graphical user interface (GUI) and perform the necessary OS leaving enough processing power. Moreover, using on-chip certification units and protected keys stored on the chip, RC32434 processor and support for industry-standard DRM mechanism.

As with the media adapter similar to the example above, the media server in Figure 4 are leveraging RC32434 processors on-chip Ethernet MAC to connect to a digital home network and connect main peripheral chipset PCI interface. In addition to a WLAN chipset, Media Server includes a multimedia encoder for real-time capture analog data stream and encoding conversion in order to comply with the digital standard (such as MPEG1) digital media streaming; an ATA (SATA) storage chipsets used to connect a standard hard disk drives; a USB2.0 or FireWire controller for connectivity to external storage and media peripherals. As with the earlier examples of media adapter, RC32434 processor is responsible for implementation of the required network protocols, and system management tasks, while increasing software and system functional allowance leave enough CPU processing power.

In the above example of media servers and media adapters design, RC32434 processor supported design engineers build high performance, cost-effective solutions, flexibility and scalability to adapt to and meet the evolving of emerging digital multimedia home network system and market demand.