open services gateway initiative (OSGi)
Founded in 1999 by several companies, the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) aims to define open standards for managing broadband services in homes and in automation and control applications. This includes control of home appliances, consumer electronics devices, security devices, cellular and manufacturing environments.
In addition, the automotive industry is also interested in a uniform platform for remote maintenance of automotive electronics. That is why, in addition to hardware and software companies, network operators and chip manufacturers, automotive electronics companies are also members of OSGi. One of the first OSGi specifications concerned the application programming interface( API) for home networks. The heterogeneous systems for home networks such as 802.11b, 1394, Home AudioVideo Interoperability (HAVI), Bluetooth, Infrared Data Association( IrDA), HomeRF and others were to be able to communicate with each other via a uniform service layer. The central hub for managing home networks is the OSGi gateway, also known as the home gateway, which handles the various systems and network protocols.
The OSGI specifications are characterized by the fact that they can be implemented independently of the hardware used, which is achieved by the consistent use of Java.