Gateway with dual homing

Background: Telia’s old telephone network is being dismantled in some areas of Sweden, and most new homes don’t get a traditional telephone copper line. Increasingly more services become IP-based, including telephony. An important difference between the old telephone lines and today’s broadband connection is that the telephone lines carry power to feed the telephone itself. This is not done in e.g. fibre connections.
In case of a power failure within the home the broadband connection is typically lost and the telephone will not work. Services and the access to these in the home become increasingly critical. In order to assure more robust connections to the home, it will probably become necessary in the future to deploy home gateways with dual connections to the internet and some kind of battery backup. An example of a service that does not work properly in a home with any telephone line is the “tryggehetslarm”. This is a service where an elderly person can press a button if they e.g. fall on the floor and can not come up by them self.
This project aims at constructing a gateway with both a wired broadband connection as well as a wireless connection (as GSM/GPRS/3G/LTE), and it also include a battery backup. Proprietary solutions exist that address parts of the problem. We want to build a system that solves all issues using open interfaces as far as possible, and at a competitive price.
Depending on interests and time, the following tasks need to be done within the area.
Tasks for the project worker:
• Make an overview and categorization of existing solutions for wireless backup (incl. but not limited to gateways)
• Design a gateway based on a Linux platform that functions with dual homing. Gateway knowledge is available at Acreo; it is the dual homing with wireless backup that is important.
• Investigate solutions that can reduce the cost of the wireless connection from a non-technical perspective – e.g., investigate how this can be done together with an operator
• Analyze how often the gateway need to contact the server
• Make a simple web interface where care personnel and relatives can monitor the state of the there relatives behind the gateway. If time allows, expand visualization to an Android platform.
• Include battery backup in the gateway design
Requirements: Control systems, IP routing knowledge, practical electronics construction, programming skills
Involved organizations: Acreo, Mittuniveristet, hjälpmedelsinstitutet