Machine to machine communication; Architecture and application

Background

The current world is making a shift towards measuring and monitoring their physical environment and the things that are of interest. As interconnectivity increases more people are leveraging the internet to analyse and visualise these different parameters. The physical entities can be of any nature, such as buildings, farmland, and natural resources like air, and even such personal real-world concepts as my favorite hiking route through the forest or my route to work

While the Internet has been evolving, another technology revolution has been progressing. The use of sensors, electronic tags, and actuators to digitally identify, observe and control objects in the physical world is being adopted on a massive scale. Costs of sensors and actuators have rapidly decreased and these devices, through increases in the computational capacity of the associated chip-sets, are now able to communicate via fixed and mobile networks. They are able to communicate information about the physical world in near real-time across networks with high bandwidth at low relative cost.

What is M2M?

M2M refers to solutions that allow communication between devices of the same type and a specific application, whether via wired or wireless communication networks. M2M solutions allow end-users to capture data about events from assets, such as temperature or inventory levels. The main aim of M2M is to achieve productivity gains, reduce costs, and increase safety or security. M2M has been applied in many different scenarios, from remote monitoring and control of enterprise assets to providing connectivity of remote machine-type devices. Remote monitoring and control has generally used for industrial applications, whereas connectivity has been beneficial in enterprise applications.

What Does an M2M solution look like?

A typical M2M system solution consists of M2M devices, communication networks that provide remote connectivity for the devices, service enablement and application logic, and integration of the M2M application into the business processes provided by an Information Technology (IT) system of the enterprise as illustrated below.

The system components of an M2M solution are as follows:

• M2M Device. This is the M2M device attached to the asset of interest which provides sensing and actuation capabilities. The M2M device is here generalized, it ranges from low-end sensor nodes to high-end complex devices with sensing capabilities.
• Network. The network provides remote connectivity between the M2M device and the application-side servers. Many different network types can be used, such as Wide Area Networks (WANs) and Local Area Networks (LANs), sometimes also referred to as Capillary Networks or M2M Area Networks. Examples of WANs are public cellular mobile networks, fixed private networks, or even satellite links.
• M2M Service Enablement. Within the generalized system solution outlined above, the concept of a separate service enablement component is also introduced. This component provides generic functionality that is common across a number of different applications. Its primary purpose is to reduce cost for implementation and ease of application development.
• M2M Application. The application component of the solution is a realization of the highly specific monitor and control process. The application is further integrated into the overall business process system of the enterprise.

Where can we apply M2M?

There is a wide array of application areas. A select variation of applications are illustrated below. It is predicted that the largest application area is Telematics for cars and vehicles. Typical applications include navigation, remote vehicle diagnostic pay-as-you-drive insurance schemes, road charging, and stolen vehicle recovery.

• Metering applications: include primarily remote meter management and data collection for energy consumption in the electricity utility sector, but also for gas and water consumption.
• Remote monitoring is the generalized monitoring of assets, and includes remote patient monitoring as one prime example.
• Fleet management includes a number of different applications, like data logging, goods and vehicle positioning, and security of valuable or hazardous goods.
• Security applications include those related to home alarms and small business surveillance solutions. The final market segment is Automated Teller Machines (ATM) and Point of Sales (POS) terminals.