Network Working Group D. Liu Internet-Draft Q. An Intended status: Experimental Alibaba Group Expires: May 3, 2017 October 30, 2016 Problem Statement for Smart Home Device Vocabulary draft-liu-t2trg-ps-smart-home-vocabulary-00 Abstract This document provides an overview of the issues associated with the IoT device information model of smart home applications and systems. Requirements Language The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on May 3, 2017. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must Liu & An Expires May 3, 2017 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Smart Home Vocabulary Problem Statement October 2016 include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2.1. Device Information Model Vocabulary Fragmentation . . . . 3 2.2. Standardization of Information Model . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Proposed Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 7. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1. Introduction Smart home is one of vertical applications of Internet of Things (IoT). The deployment of smart home applications and systems often requires various types of devices (for example, home appliances) from different device manufacturers, and each device requires multiple properties and/or methods (for example, switch, mode, etc.) supported. Now, many consortiums are working on device models to descibe the properties and methods of IoT devices, like information model to describe the data produced by device, and interaction model to define how to interact with device. However, simply relying on device model still cannot guarantee the semantic interoperability. Current device information model vocabularies for smart home are often tightly coupled to limited number of device manufacturers, thus resulting in relatively rigid and static device vocabularies. The static nature of such device vocabularies greatly reduces and, in many cases, limits the ability of a smart home service provider to introduce new or modify existing device properties and/or methods. This document outlines the problems encountered with existing device information model vocabularies for smart home, and provides the requirement that is necessary to solve the problem. 2. Problem Statement The following points describe aspects of existing smart home device vocabularies that are problematic. Liu & An Expires May 3, 2017 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Smart Home Vocabulary Problem Statement October 2016 2.1. Device Information Model Vocabulary Fragmentation Device information model vocabularies are often coupled to specific device manufacturers. Even for same kind of device type, the information model's properties and command are different. For example, for the air conditioner, manufacturer A may define its switch feature as "on", and define value 1 as "switch on" and value 0 as "switch off"; whereas, manufacturer B may define the switch feature as "open", and define value 1 as "switch on" and value 0 as "switch off". Such Fragmentation imposes constraints on smart home deployment, potentially inhibiting the smart home service provider from providing smart device interaction function for customers, and reduces flexibility because it would be difficult to support devices from new manufacturers. One possible solution is to define an unified information model specification. Each device manufacturer can map its private device information model, thus helping to bridge between different device information model. This information model could be implemented on the IoT service platform in the cloud or locally on the smart home appliacne. If implemented on Intrnet server, it is easy for device manufacturers to configure the mapping, but it may bring extra cost to IoT service platform as well as increase its complexity. If implemented locally, it could bring better user experience since the briding is completed locally, but the updating of device information model would be difficult. 2.2. Standardization of Information Model Even though many consortiums are working on defining an universal device information model for smart home, there is still no dominant standard that can cover the requirements of most manufacturers. ZigBee Alliance is working on "ZigBee Cluster Library", which defines the device model as well as the detailed device vocabulary for smart home. But it is only limited to ZigBee environment. OCF is working on "Smart Home Device Specification", which defines the device model and vocabulary for smart home. But the vocabulary is very basic, thus cannot satisfy the requirement of samrt home implementation. W3C is also woring on TD (Things Description) standards. However, those information model related standards only trying to standardize the way of describing the IoT device's property and its Liu & An Expires May 3, 2017 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Smart Home Vocabulary Problem Statement October 2016 command. The difficulty is that there is no common "vocabulary" for the information model of the IoT device. Although the information model could be standardized, it is still impossible to interoperate in this case. 3. Proposed Solution Define an unified "vocabulary" standards for the information model of smart home. This standards could be crucial to enable interoperate for smart home appliance. 4. IANA Considerations TBD 5. Security Considerations TBD 6. Acknowledgements TBD 7. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, . Authors' Addresses Dapeng Liu Alibaba Group Beijing Beijing Phone: +86-1391788933 Email: maxpassion@gmail.com Qing An Alibaba Group Beijing Beijing Phone: +86-13810495624 Email: anqing.aq@alibaba-inc.com Liu & An Expires May 3, 2017 [Page 4]