A Research on USB Device Remote Sharing Methods in Virtual Desktop Environment

Abstract

Virtualization and cloud-based services are widely used and developed, and for cloud desktop users, using local hardware devices in remote access is unavoidable. USB/IP is a protocol that encapsulates the data packets of USB devices and completes the transmission through IP networks. This study proposes a method to implement USB device redirection in a Windows environment based on USB/IP protocol. The architecture of the method will be described in detail in Section 3. Using driver development techniques, the local host side is responsible for local identification and data filtering of hardware devices, and the remote desktop side is responsible for simulating the virtual host controller and virtual devices so that the upper layer applications can use the response data of the acquired hardware devices normally. An effective IP communication channel is established between the two for sending, receiving, parsing, and using the USB device data. The experimental results show that the method is feasible and can support users to connect to the device remotely and complete daily operations smoothly.