Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) IP Home Gateway as Universal Multi-purpose Enabler for Smart Home Services Jiri Hosek · Pavel Masek · Dominik Kovac · Michal Ries · Franz Kr¨ opfl Received: 07/05/2014 / Accepted: date Abstract There are many candidates for a communi- cation infrastructure between the smart home gateway and service providers, distribution centres or end-users accessing smart home applications remotely. Optimally the access technology should be already deployed in order to minimize initial investments and in parallel must provide sufficient reliability and security even for critical applications. Therefore, we focused at already deployed platforms which have a strong potential to become the key communication technologies for smart home domain. Furthermore, we investigated the ap- plicability of residential gateway access technology for emerging home automation services. Finally, we devel- oped and demonstrate a middleware solution enabling the ”state of technology” IP-based home gateway to serve as a universal multi-purpose enabler for connected home automation systems like alarm systems, smart metering and grid, photo-voltaic energy production sys- tems, etc. Keywords Alarm Systems · Home Automation · M2M · Smart Home Gateway J. Hosek, P. Masek, and D. Kovac Brno University of Technology, Department of Telecommunications Technicka 12, 616 Brno, Czech Republic Tel.: +420 541 146 957 E-mail: hosek@feec.vutbr.cz M. Ries Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Telecommunications Karlsplatz 13, 1040 Vienna, Austria E-mail: mries@nt.tuwien.ac.at F.Kr¨opfl Telekom Austria Group Lassallestraße 9, A-1020, Vienna, Austria E-mail: franz.kroepfl@telekomaustria.com 1 Introduction Many smart home applications and services have been marked recently for almost all aspects of home environ- ment (smart grids, heating, lighting, alarm systems). These smart home products are frequently stand alone solutions designed for a specific usage, e.g. heating. This approach is not sustainable due its specific applicabil- ity and cost ineffectiveness [1]. Therefore, it is neces- sary to come up with universal, cost efficient solution for smart home applications based on actual residential access gateway technologies, already deployed data net- works and/or open smart home automation frameworks [1], [2]. Furthermore, the access technology should pro- vide sufficient quality of service (QoS) for machine to machine (M2M) type traffic and sufficient level of net- work security in optimal way [3]. In optimal case, the proposed technology should be able to support existing smart home infrastructures, e.g. alarm systems with DTMF messaging. In our fea- sibility study we have identified following key technolo- gies which create a suitable basis for the presented con- cept of universal multi-purpose enabler for home au- tomation services: – residential home gateway, – open Home Automation Bus (openHAB), – IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). It has been already approved [2], [4] that the resi- dential IP routers (gateways) can serve as a centre-piece of the intelligent buildings and interact with different home automation systems and sensors without any ex- cessive effort to create wired and/or wireless home net- work. The communication technology between the gate- way and home automation appliances is highly depen- dent of the type of connected systems or sensors. For