he management of the energy consumed in households is nowadays recognized as a key issue toward CO 2 emissions reduction and optimal use of natural energy resources. Although significant improvements in appliance electronics have led to products that consume significantly less energy, the more intensive and widespread use of domestic appliances in the past 10 years has resulted in a 2 percent annual increase of the energy consumed by European households [1], with standby devices accounting for 8 percent of total energy consumption.Despite the introduction of governmental initiatives, such as the Energy label activity of the EU [2], aspiring at raising people's awareness about the environmental consequences of the energy consumption problem, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that electricity consumption in households will continue to grow by 25 percent from 2010 to 2020 [3].The energy reservation concept presented in this article offers an automated yet proactive way of controlling the energy consumed in households through the real-time management of the contained appliances, whether they are in active or standby state.The proposed solution draws its originality from two main usability factors. First, it is non-invasive concerning its communication requirements, because it operates over any home network without introducing extra network components. Second, it adds intelligence in the network so that energy management is performed transparent to the home user.To satisfy both factors, the overall architecture brings together the latest IP communication technologies over mesh, wireless, fixed, and power line networks, and a residential gateway architecture that provides the middleware substrate for the formulation of a number of energy management services targeting three user categories: residential users, communication network operators, and electricity generation companies.The solution enables the first two user categories to build up energy management services for the maintenance of the energy consumed in households within user-defined limits, while it can be exploited by electricity generation companies in the acquisition of energy consumption figures for large population areas and the fine-tuning of energy generation planning.Although a brief overview of the architecture and its services is given in [4], in this article we give a complete detailed description of it, covering the energy management concept on which energy saving services operate, the protocols and interworking functions needed for services implementation, and the message flows that network components exchange in the context of the three energy management functions supported.In the following sections our energy management concept, which is fundamental for the realization of our architecture, is introduced, and the overall architecture along with its internal components is drawn up, as well as its protocols and exploitation capabilities in the broader landscape of energy saving applications. Energy Management ConceptA key aspect in the...

As the problem of energy generation and use becomes apparent, technologies for optimal energy management and rational use gain importance. The present work illustrates an architecture that focuses on energy saving at households, a sector accounting for the 42% of global energy consumption in the European Union. The main part of the architecture is provided by an optimized residential gateway, which bears appropriate home network interfaces and service logic to allow users perform personalized, pervasive programming of the energy consumption of home devices, such as white goods, home communication equipment and audiovisual equipment by enabling real time monitoring of energy consumption in both active and stand-by modes.

Heterogeneous networks are collections of communication platforms utilising different protocols. Heterogeneity was born by the need of operators to offer within short time many different services on the market. As a result, nowadays users communicate through collections of networks utilising different protocols, rendering service mapping from one network to another a complex issue. With the emergence of IMS and the introduction of IP and SIP protocols as a means for achieving network homogeneity, service interoperability has become even more important. With regard to this problem, the paper proposes a method for homogenising IMS networks with regard to the utilised QoS settings and charging policy. The paper explains how the method can be applied on real IMS networks for the preservation of QoS and charging records across the whole communication path and carries out a comparative analysis with performance figures obtained in real networks.

Given the energy waste problem and the consequent need for energy optimal use, this paper presents a novel network architecture able to perform real time management of the energy consumed by household appliances. Deploying the recent KNX power line communication technology, the proposed architecture performs three main functions; monitoring of the energy consumed by household devices for metering purposes, management of household devices so that the energy they consume is kept within userdefined limits and management of standby devices for minimal energy consumption.

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