SiConnect, POEM,

Technology allows domestic wiring to carry high quality data for home comms and entertainment at a realistic cost

News Release from: SiConnect Ltd
14/06/2006

SiConnect has announced a technology breakthrough for in-home communication. The company's POEMä technology addresses the technical challenges presented by the use of existing domestic electrical wiring for the transport of audio, video, voice and data in the home, and enables a new price point to be achieved.

Developed to provide reliable whole home coverage for a broad range of emerging in-home audio/video applications, including the distribution of triple play services, SiConnect’s POEM technology will deliver managed QoS, a true plug and play user experience, privacy protection, full compliance with global EMC regulations, and a $5 chip price.

The ‘best effort’ approach of Ethernet-like technologies, that rely on an asynchronous Carrier Sense Multiple Access / Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) protocol, cannot provide the consistent quality of service that’s essential for a good consumer experience.

SiConnect’s POEM technology therefore uses a Synchronous Multiple Access / Contention Resolution (SMA/CR) protocol and an inbuilt QoS management structure that delivers 16 different service levels for prioritising traffic, including audio, video, VoIP and IP data streams. This unique combination guarantees that a fair and prioritised distribution of bandwidth between services is always achieved, and crucially, latency and jitter are controlled – a significant concern in applications dependent upon continuous real time delivery of MPEG video and uncompressed audio, such as IPTV and surround sound home theatre systems.

By using a peer-to-peer meshed network topology, SiConnect’s POEM technology is able to embrace all available power sockets in the home to achieve whole home coverage. Each node can act as a repeater, which not only maximises coverage but also optimises throughput.

The connection quality of each link is always known to every POEM enabled node on the network, and as a result, the best path is always used to optimise throughput. New nodes are automatically authorised and up to 255 networks, each with 255 nodes, are supported.