According to Research and Markets’ “Smart Houses: Smart Grid Extensions” ICT Markets and Technologies Development report, the U.S. market for information and communications technology, or “ICT,” in Smart Houses is huge, especially with the support of the government.

This latest report addresses development of wireline and wireless information and communication technologies to support the smart house infrastructure. 

The research agency finds that though the smart house was originated in the 1980s, the concept gained significant popularity in the recent years, especially due to the growing importance of energy conservation as well as economic benefits. With each year, the smart houses communications technologies are becoming more and more affordable and efficient on the industry-wide scale for multiple applications, the agency said. 

The importance of Smart Houses proliferation is now tied with the smart grid deployments, the report said. In future, the agency expects, smart houses communications networks will become a part of a large country-wide project, such as centralized and intelligent automation system, which integrates utilities and consumers.

The report analyzes Smart Houses information and communications technologies under both wireless and wireline segments. These technologies support such communications structures such as home area networks, security, and others, such as HDTV distribution in the house.

Important markets covered include wireless ICT such as Z-wave and ZigBee, IEEE802.15.4 and wireline technologies such as HomePlug, HomePNA (News - Alert), G.hn, MOCA and respective markets, with emphasis on mesh networking and the IP environment that only recently became available for home-based communications nodes. 

Wireline technologies are using the existing Smart Home wiring, while wireless technologies support connectivity between various home network nodes by implementing the necessary wireless networking, Research and Markets said.

Wireline technologies, according to officials at Research and Markets, are standardized by multiple standard organizations and industry groups; for example, the ITU G.hn standard came to the picture only recently, when millions of MOCA and HomePLug nodes have been already installed and functioning, they said.

The ITU standards pave the way for “universal” technologies that provide connectivity through electric wire, phone wire and coaxial cable in a Smart House. 

The complicated wireline ICT environment reflects the industry efforts as well as the vendors' interest to find the place in this lucrative market, the agency remarks. 

While wireline technologies are designed for high-speed transmission of up to 1 Gb/s, wireless technologies considered in the report can support relatively slow communications of up to 1 Mb/s, and they may be used for different applications.

The report also provides details of Home Area Networks features and markets and shows their importance for the Smart Grid development.