Ubiquitous Audio Access in the UPnP Home Network

Abstract

The evolution of wireless transmission technology enables users to have multimedia services anywhere in the digital home network. In this paper, we propose a handoff control scheme for devices without computation capability, such as the light-weight Bluetooth (LW-BT) headset. The main concern of the handoff is that the client device doesn't have the computation capability. The main function of the computing powerless client device is to send/receive signals and play the audio data. Thus, how to have the handoff control when a computing powerless client device is switched from one access point to another access point becomes a problem to be resolved. A typical example is in the BT wireless network environment. The LW-BT headset is dedicated for audio applications and doesn't have extra computation capability. The proposed handoff control scheme puts all handoff computation overhead on the master BT device, such that the LW-BT headset is unaware of the handoff. Based on the proposed handoff control scheme, a Ubiquitous Audio Access Platform for the LW-BT headset (UAB) is proposed and developed to enable users to access the audio flies using the LW- BT headset in the digital home network even when they are roaming.