MoCA: Ubiquitous Multimedia Networking in the Home

Shlomo Ovadia

Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 5:00pm
Engr IV Maxwell Room 57-124

Abstract
The Multimedia-over-Coax Alliance (MoCA) standard is rapidly emerging as the de-facto standard in North America for multimedia home networking. This is driven by the desire to have digital content from various sources such as DVRs, audio devices and PCs reliably available anywhere in the home using the in-home existing coaxial cable wiring. The MoCA technology coexists with other services at the home such as cable TV, cable modem, and satellite services. The seminar will present a broad overview of the MoCA 1.0/1.1 PHY and MAC layer features. The MoCA 1.0 technology achieves MAC throughputs exceeding 100 Mb/s in 97% of all outlets in the home with no changes to the home coax infrastructure, and with packet error rates less than 10-5, and with an average latency of less than 3.5 ms. In addition, the key features of the MoCA 2.0 specifications, which are currently under development, will be presented. MoCA 2.0 technology will achieve a minimum of 300 Mb/s MAC throughputs in at least 95% of all serviceable coaxial outlets of all coax outlets with packet error rates less than 10-6.

Biography
Shlomo Ovadia has received his Ph.D. in Optical Sciences from the Optical Sciences Center, University of Arizona in 1984, and has over 25 years of experience in research and development of optical and RF communications products at IBM, Bellcore, General Instrument, Intel, Entropic Communications, and DIRECTV. Shlomo has been at DIRECTV since 2008 as Senior Principal Architect, where he continues to lead a core-team that has developed the MoCA Mid-RF specifications and certification test plan for their next-generation set-top boxes. In addition, Shlomo is contributing to the development of RVU Protocol specification standard for streaming digital content between networked devices.

Shlomo is the author of a recently published book titled Broadband Cable TV Access Networks: From Technologies to Applications (Prentice Hall, 3/2001). He is a Senior Member of IEEE/LEOS/COMSOC with more than 70 technical publications and conference presentations, He is the inventor of 44 patents, in which 30 patents were issued, and all the others are pending, and his personal biography is included in the Millennium edition of Who's Who in Science and Engineering (2000/2001).